The key to the family deed chest. How to decipher and study old documents: being a guide to the reading of ancient manuscripts

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HOW TO DECIPHER AND STUDY OLD
DOCUMENTS.

THE KEY TO THE FAMILY DEED CHEST.

HOW TO DECIPHER

AND

STUDY OLD DOCUMENTS

BEING A GUIDE TO THE READING OF
ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS.

BY

E. E. THOYTS.

WITH AN INTRODUCTION

BY

C. TRICE MARTIN,

ASSISTANT KEEPER OF H.M. RECORDS.

LONDON :
ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW.
1893. *

A. 5 I

Sff

INTRODUCTION.

BOOKS written to teach any branch of
human knowledge are, in most cases,
written by persons who have long known and
used the knowledge which they impart, and,
perhaps for that reason, have more or less for-
gotten the steps of the ladder up which they
have climbed ; but in this case the process has
been so recent, that the difficulties and dangers of
each step have been remembered, and the reader
accordingly warned against them.

The meaning of the various kinds of documents
which are likely to be found among the title-deeds
of an estate, or among the archives of a parish or
a corporation, are described without needless tech-
nicalities, in a practical way, which will appeal to
those who begin to work among such material
without previous knowledge.

vi Introduction.

The first step, of course, is to learn to read.
This wants perseverance and a quick eye, but
regular practice will soon enable the student to
read any ordinary documents, which at first
seemed utterly unintelligible, and gradually the
power of understanding really difficult and ob-
scure MSS. will be acquired. But this first step
must be thoroughly mastered, for to attempt
to get information from old writings without
thoroughly knowing the forms of the letters, and
the different systems of abbreviations and con-
tractions, would be like trying to keep accounts
without knowing how to add up a column of
figures.

And indeed paleography is the foundation of
all history. There may be historians, like the
late Mr. Freeman, who have but little knowledge
of the science (he, I believe, boasted of his in-
ability to read a manuscript), but then such
writers rely on the paleographic knowledge of
others, who have edited the manuscripts which
they desire to use, and they have, or ought to
have, sufficient scholarship to judge which are the
best editions, and even occasionally to detect
editors' mistakes.

But an acquaintance with this branch of know-
ledge is often of the greatest use to biographers
and historians. It is much better, for instance,

Introduction. vii

to be able to judge whether a certain document
is of the age which it professes, or in whose hand
a draft of a treaty is, than to have to accept the
opinion of someone else.

The mistakes made for want of this knowledge
are common, and sometimes very amusing.
Familiar enough is the old story of the parish
priest in the time of King Henry VIII., who in
the canon of the Mass, in the prayer after taking
the wine, read the word : sumpsimus, as mump-
simus, because he had a thirteenth-century missal
in which s and m are much alike, and refused to
alter his mistake when it was pointed out to him.
It was referred to by King Henry VIII. in his
speech to the Parliament in 1545, and, in fact, this
ignorant priest has ' made himself an everlasting
name ' for conservative stupidity.

In more recent times, the historian of one of
our beautiful north-country abbeys talks of a gift
of a silver chest by the founder in the eleventh
century. The reader wonders what this chest
could have been — was it a native work or im-
ported ? was it some ecclesiastical ornament or
merely a strong box ? But on turning to the
document on which the account is based, the
meaning is clear. It was not a chest of silver,
but an ordinary mark of silver. The MS. reads
unamarcaargenti. The writer of the book had

viii Introduction.

not noticed the contraction over the first a,
divided the words wrongly, and read it unam
arcam, instead of unam marcam.

In another similar book the story is narrated
of the ill-treatment by a forester of an abbot
whose house was near a royal forest. The abbot
was no doubt like the monk who made the cele-
brated pilgrimage to Canterbury —

' An outrydere that lovede venerye.

*****
He yaf nat of that text a pulled hen
That seith that hunters been nat holy men.'

And perhaps the forester had good reason to com-
plain of him. But in the account of the quarrel,
the forester is said to have gone into the abbot's
kitchen and taken away his cabbages — not very
likely things for a forester to take, as he probably
would have found something far better worth
carrying off. However, on looking at the MS. it
appears almost certain that what was read as
chous is really chens, that is, chiens. In fact, they
were the

' Grehoundes he hadde as swifte as fowel in flight,
For priking and for hunting for the hare,'

who were perhaps lying before the fire asleep after
a long afternoon's coursing.

In the same case it is said that the forester's
treatment of the tenants on one of the abbey
farms is so bad that no one dare die there ; it is

Introduction. ix

suggested, because the forester would not allow
anyone to come to administer the last consola-
tions of religion. But the words de murir, on
which the observation is based, are merely a care-
less scribe's writing of demeuret.

In another book farmers are represented as
using stones for fuel, which are suggested to have
been coal ; but this results from misreading
petarum (peat), as if it were pet a rum, a contracted
form of petrarum (stones).

The spreading desire to know something of pale-
ography is very remarkable, and is much to be
commended. For all persons who interest them-
selves in the documents to which they may have
access in the possession of private persons, or in
repositories not generally known, are helping in
the grand work of making clear the laws and
customs and mode of living of our ancestors, and
thus constantly come across information, not to
be found in our more public collections of records,
which often throws light on many dark passages
of history.

C. T. MARTIN.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE.

IN the following pages I have tried to describe
the things which puzzled me when, as a
beginner, I first essayed to read and understand
the old records of bygone times. Written in a
language I knew not, relating to customs no
longer existing, all was strange and unfamiliar.
I toiled on ; by degrees light dawned and the
difficulties melted away. The knowledge thus
gained I have endeavoured, in all humility, to
write down as a possible guide and help to
others who may, like myself, prefer to follow
antiquarian research by means of old deeds and
other manuscripts, as being the original source
and most trustworthy fountain-head of knowledge,
and by this means to avoid as much as possible
repeating the assertions and mistakes of previous
writers.

In the chapter on Paleography I have named

xii Author s Preface.

the books which were my guides, and in these
pages I have tried to supply information supple-
mentary to what is already printed on the subject,
rather than repeat what has previously been
explained. The growing fashion for all kinds of
antiquarianism creates a desire for books treating
upon such subjects, and this has induced me to
write this book.

E. E. THOYTS.

Sulhamstead, May, 1893.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER

I. HINTS TO THE BEGINNER

II. CHARACTER BY HANDWRITING .

III. SAXON, NORMAN-FRENCH AND LAW LATIN

IV. OLD DEEDS ....

V. LAW TECHNICALITIES

VI. MANOR AND COURT ROLLS

VII. MONASTIC CHARTERS

VIII. PARISH REGISTERS

IX. PARISH OFFICERS AND THEIR ACCOUNT BOOKS 99

X. BOOKS ON PALEOGRAPHY
XI. OLD LETTERS
XII. ABBREVIATIONS, ETC.

I'AGE
I

H
28
38

49
63
76
90

124
132
138

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

SIGNATURE

EXTRACT FROM DOMESDAY

NORMAN-FRENCH DEED .

FORM OF FINE

SHERIFF'S ROLL (NEVILLE MSS.)

COURT ROLL

ARABIC NUMERALS

READING ABBEY CARTULARY

READING ABBEY CARTULARY

PAPER-MAKER'S INITIALS

ALPHABETS

'9
29

34
57
66
76
79
9i
93
133
134

ERRATA.

Page 77, line 2, for ' miniscule ' read ' minuscule.'
,, 85, line 4, for ' single ' read ' one or more.'
„ 89, line iy, for ' mendicant orders' read 'mendicants.'
,, 89, line 26, for ' 1219' read ' 1204, and confirmed in

1215.'
,, 92, for ' Monumentse Ritualise' read ' Monumenta

Ritual ia. ' ,,

" 9hf or ' charter ' read ' cartulary.'

HOW TO DECIPHER AND STUDY OLD
DOCUMENTS.

CHAPTER I.

HINTS TO BEGINNERS.

FASHION changes in everything; but these
alterations go on so imperceptibly, so gra-
dually, that ofttimes we fail to recognise their
progress except by glancing backwards into the
past. But the fashion of handwriting and its
changes are very forcibly brought home to us
when confronted for the first time with some old
deed or paper ; and a hopeless feeling of help-
lessness reduces the amateur to the verge or
despair as the pages of unintelligible hiero-
glyphics are spread out, lacking in any sense,
and as unfamiliar as Sanscrit or Egyptian
characters. But perseverance conquers all
difficulties.

Every generation has its own particular type

2 Hints to Beginners.

of writing. Compare, for instance, any bundle
of letters taken, hap-hazard, out of an old desk
or secr6taire ; it is quite easy to sort them into
bundles in sequence of dates, and also guess
accurately the age and position of the writers.

The flowing Italian hand, used by educated
women early in this century, has changed with
fashion into the freer style of the succeeding
generation ; this in the third generation has
further developed into the bold, decisive, almost
masculine writing adopted by the more strong-
minded females of the latter end of this nine-
teenth century.

- y Of course, school-teaching is responsible to a
certain extent for a set handwriting. Our Univer-
sity men of to-day all, with few exceptions, use
a neat scholarly form of writing, free from
nourishes, and with simple capital letters and
the small broken-backed Greek letter £. Com-
pared with the scholar's, the soldier's writing
is bolder and rounder, while the clerk's is still
more distinct in type in its open lettering, inter-
spersed with curls and twists. So with most
professions it will be found that each has special
characteristics ; but these are liable to change
according to circumstances ; thus, the clerk will
form his letters less distinctly after the need of
great legibility no longer compels him to careful-
ness. Self-education will often alter a vulgar

Hints to Beginners. 3

ill-formed writing to a better, more studied style ;
and writing is the clearest proof of both bodily
and mental condition, for in cases of paralysis or
mental aberration the doctor takes it as a certain
guide.

Looking back to the days when writing was a
profession of itself, it can easily be understood
how it is that we find less variety among old
writings. For in those days, before printing was
discovered, or at least but imperfectly executed
and understood, all books had to be produced by
hand, and were the work either of paid scribes,
whose duty it was to reproduce copies of well-
known authors; or else copied out by clerks
or private secretaries at the dictation of the
authors themselves, who could seldom spare the
time to commit their ideas to paper, or, even
if they did so, it was customary to have addi-
tional copies made by professed scribes. Un-
acquainted with the subjects of the books, and
copying merely from verbal dictation, it is no
wonder that mistakes and misunderstandings
often occurred, especially in the spelling of place
and personal names ; for one man reading aloud
to several scribes, each would write down the
names and words as they sounded to his indi-
vidual sense of hearing, for the constant interrup-
tion necessary to ensure complete accuracy would
cause the process to be tedious and very lengthy.

1—2

4 Hints to Beginners.

Private correspondence, even, was carried on
as a profession ; writing shops existed up to a
comparatively late period.

Authors who wrote their own books had them
afterwards transcribed neatly for preservation, and
probably destroyed the original notes, for of these
comparatively few, if any, exist.

All the earliest writers had a special educa-
tion for their profession, being sent to some
monastery for that purpose ; hence they were
either foreigners, or educated under foreign
monks, either French or Italian, and the effect
of this teaching is clearly demonstrated by the
similitude which exists all over Europe between
manuscripts of the early Middle Ages.

In England the Norman Conquest overruled
most of the previous customs and styles. Vast
crowds of Normans emigrated continuously to our
shores. This went on more or less for at least
three or four centuries, and then prejudice against
foreigners asserted itself, and the Saxon element,
which still remained among the lower classes of
the people, gained the ascendant. In the reign
of Henry V. alien priories were suppressed, and
foreign monks and priests no longer travelled
backwards and forwards from the Norman abbeys
to the junior houses or cells in England. The
rich merchants, who resorted here from the Low
Countries and Germany, brought with them their

Hints to Beginners. 5

own customs and fashions ; and at this time will
first be noticed the use of a written character,
like the modern German, which steadily came
more and more into use until the end of the
seventeenth century, when it died out and the
style altered to a rounder, freer hand.

So long as education was almost entirely
monastic, or at least conducted by teachers
trained in monastic institutions, we find (as we
should naturally expect to do) a regularity, care-
fulness and formality in the handwriting of the
period ; but so soon as England had shaken off
the authority of Rome and the educated com-
munities had been scattered and disbanded, a
marked change took place in all kinds of writing.
The monks and nuns, rendered homeless by the
Reformation, returned to their native villages,
thus spreading education among all classes and
creating a desire after learning. But the primary
cause of the alteration in handwriting, so very
marked in the sixteenth century, was perhaps
attributable to the introduction of the art of
printing, which naturally was fatal to handwriting
as a profession. The scribe was no longer re-
quired to multiply the author's productions ; so
that lawyers and public office clerks only remained
out of the large class who had formerly earned
their living as professional writers. In the
actual writing, also, a change took place. The

6 Hints to Beginners.

old elaborate letters were supplanted by the
simple capitals copied from the printer's blocks.
Some day, maybe, writing will die out altogether ;
every year fresh improvements and inventions
are increasing ; even now type-writers and multi-
plying machines are used in place of handwriting
in many offices.

A hundred years ago, very few if any of the
labourers could either read or write ; even now, in
out-of-the-way country places, there exist a few
old people ignorant of these (to us) necessary arts.
The marriage registers of the last century prove
to us the ignorance of the country folk, for neither
the contracting parties nor their witnesses could
often write their names, and instead used either
some eccentric monogram bearing a faint re-
semblance to initials — a memory perhaps of a
bygone and very slight amount of teaching; or
oftener still we find in lieu of name the old
Christian cross, which has been in use by the
illiterate from Saxon times as a pledge of good
faith and consent.

Previous to the present century, all education
in country places was either nil or provided out
of the bounty of the squire or parson, the teacher
being some old ignorant person prevented by age
or bodily infirmity from pursuing active labour,
and whose qualifications were merely a smattering
of the 'three R's,' which, with plain sewing,

Hints to Beginners. 7

was the whole of his useful though scanty re
pertoire. Children then were sent out to work at
the age of nine or ten years, and earlier if any-
body could be found to employ them. When once
placed out, they had no opportunities of gaining
further book knowledge, and soon forgot the little
they had learnt for want of practice or stimula-
tion, nor had they sufficient mental capacity to
study by themselves, except in very exceptional
cases of natural genius.

If this was the state of things within the
memory of those still alive, we can well believe
how very limited was the knowledge of hand-
writing some hundreds of years ago, and can
more fully understand that the scribe was a very
important personage, and took great pride in his
work.

It is very rare to find mistakes or erasures in
the lettering of old charters. Varieties of spelling
occur everywhere ; a name is often found spelt
two or three different ways on the same page ;
but this is easily explained if the work was
written from dictation, especially if pronounced
to or by a foreigner. Our English language is so
full of unexpected variations of spelling that
it is no wonder that names of people and places
suffered at the hands of a transcriber unacquainted
with the localities, and who merely wrote down
the words as they sounded to him. The actual

8 Hints to Beginners.

spelling of words remained fairly constant. Cer-
tainly to us they look very curious, for English^
orthography has undergone innumerable changes ;
in course of time new words are being repeatedly
coined, and old words alter not only in spelling,
but also in meaning and significance. If we wish
for an example of Old English phraseology, we
have our present version of the Bible — which,
being translated into English in the seventeenth
century, now sounds quaint, and in many parts
the sense of the words is a matter of dispute.
If it be compared with the Revised Version the
changes which have taken place in the two past
centuries become very evident. All this must be
borne in mind when the task of transcribing and
translating old writing is undertaken, and allow-
ance must be made for all such alterations both
in style and spelling.

It has been said that a knowledge of Latin is
indispensable to the would-be transcriber of old
deeds ; this is not really the case for ordinary anti-
quarian research, for the meaning can be discovered
easily with only a very slight amount of instruction.
Legal Latin consists so entirely of set forms that
when once these forms are familiar to the reader,
they are without any difficulty recognised, and
are so little liable to any variations that they are
easily rendered into English. The most important
points being a correct and accurate attention to

Hints to Beginners. 9

the names of people and places, with the de-
scriptions of the localities referred to. As the
use of Latin for legal transactions almost entirely
superseded the Norman-French language after
the reign of Edward III. (although it is an open
question whether deeds were not duplicated into
the two languages), very few old deeds are met
with in the latter language, and those few are
usually so well written and very legible, that
tbey can easily be understood with the help of
a slight knowledge of modern French.

Indeed, a transcriber's work properly consists
chiefly in correctly putting into modern hand-
writing the deeds which are only illegible to the
uninitiated ; in consequence, an actual acquaint-
ance with the Latin grammar is less important
than a correct eye, quick to note every minute
difference in letters. Every stroke of the pen
means something ; bars or curves are the repre-
sentatives of absent words or syllables, and are
never dashed down hap-hazard or by accident.
Therefore it is possible to understand the abbre-
viated portions correctly, although extension with
absolute correctness can never be ensured without
study of the language and a knowledge of its
grammar.

One of the best methods of learning to read <~^
courthand, is first to devote a short time to
the study of shorthand ; any system will do,

io Hints to Beginners.

it being merely a means of training the eye
and brain into speedily noticing small shades
of difference, undetected except by comparison.
For in all kinds of shorthand the least stroke or
dot, or even a change in the position of a line, will
entirely alter the spelling or meaning of a word.

Next, I would advise the careful study of an old
deed, one of those written late in the seventeenth
century or early in the eighteenth, because these
deeds give the phraseology or form of sentences,
and are often written in English in a fairly clear
hand, freer from contractions than earlier manu-
scripts, and the beginner has so many new things
to discover and learn that it is well to com-
mence by not attempting too much at the first
start. An acquaintance with the style of words
used in legal language is a good groundwork to
commence with. Spread out the parchment
before you ; never mind the fact that only a word
or two, or even only a chance letter here and
there catches your eye. Then set to work to
compare the letters of the words you do know
with the letters in other words which at the com-
mencement looked so strange to you.

It was in this way that Egyptian hieroglyphics
were first successfully studied.

Remember that consonants seldom come to-
gether; no word is formed without the help of
one or more vowels ; the final letter or letters

Hints to Beginners. 1 1

more often supply a clue than the capital letter
or beginning syllable, especially in the so-called
courthands.

Beware of too imaginative guesses. Although :
this fault is easily remedied, still, it is better to
spell a word out letter by letter, however unin-
telligible and depressing the result at first may
be. It is so easy to take a name or word for
granted, and an idea once seized upon is not
quickly eradicated, and may bring about absurd
results and deductions.

Do not ponder too long over a word which,
puzzles you, but go on, leaving gaps in your copy
with a stroke underneath corresponding with or
leaving sufficient space for the missing word.
These spaces can then be filled in afterwards,
when the general sense of the document has been
mastered and the aspect of the particular style of
writing has become familiar. Then it will be
found that words hitherto seemingly unintelligible
resolve themselves into readable form, and al-
though apparently impossible to decipher at the
first reading, later on they present no difficulty.
A little practice and patience soon overcome the
difficulties of the first start, and after that the
progress is rapid.

To begin by learning a variety of old alphabets
seems to me so much waste of time, although it
would be a valuable groundwork to commence

12 Hints to Beginners.

with. The true alphabet for beginners lies in the
contracted words, whose missing portions must
be supplied by the reader from the few letters
given, which are often not even one connected
syllable, but instead merely one or two letters
out of the missing syllable clustered together.

The reason for this style of writing was to save
time and material. With use it grew into a com-
plete system, a language of its own. At the time
it was penned, these contractions were no doubt
perfectly familiar to all, just as our modern
abbreviations are. Of these last there are more
contractions in use nowadays than would at
first be realized — our daily correspondence is full
of them ; these may have originated from the
older system of contractions, and be relics of it,
still left lingering on.

A few examples of modern abbreviations will
not be out of place here, as showing that a con-
tracted form of writing is not so very difficult or
extraordinary after all.

&, and, derived from the Latin et ; the second
example, which is still in use, can be traced in
very old documents from et, till gradually it
assumed its modern shape.

M r , mister or master; S r for sir was formerly
in common use.

C°, company ; C ie , compagnie (French) ; etc.,
the first three letters of the Latin word' etcetera.

Hints to Beginners. 13

The words with, which, whereof, where, etc.,
were formerly abbreviated; also y r for your, y e
the, and many others now obsolete.

Pounds, shillings and pence we still designate
by the Latin £ s. d.

The long word ' affectionate ' is seldom written
in full ; so, too, with many other words there are
recognised forms of contraction, and when this
is borne in mind the abbreviations of old deeds
appear in quite a different light, and we attack
their difficulties with less dread of failure.

CHAPTER II.

HANDWRITING.

MANY books have been recently published
on the subject of ' Character by Hand-
writing,' but they are not very descriptive in
detail, although the theories and rules for char-
acter-describing by this means are both clear and
decided.

It is now no longer the rule to teach children
to write entirely by the aid of set copies, as was
the case with our forefathers, who wrote after one
approved pattern, which children copied as nearly
as possible from the original set for them ; there-
fore characteristic peculiarities were longer in
asserting themselves, and what is now considered
a ' formed ' handwriting was not developed till
late in life.

There were, and still are, two divisions or classes
of handwriting — the professional and the personal ;
with the first the action was mechanical, and

Handwriting. 1 5

exhibits few, if any, traces of personality. Yet
even in the oldest manuscripts there are cer-
tain defined characteristics plainly shown. The
handwritings of historical and celebrated person-
ages coincide to a remarkable degree with their
known virtues and vices, as criticised and detailed
by their biographers.

As the art of writing became general, its form
varied more and more, becoming gradually less
formal, and each person wrote as was easiest to
himself. Education, as a rule, has a far from p.
beneficial effect upon handwriting ; an active
brain creates ideas too fast to give the hand
time to form the letters clearly, patiently and
evenly, the matter, not the material, being to the
writer of primary importance.

So, as study increased among all classes,
writing degenerated from its originally clear,
regular lettering into every style of penmanship.

Of course a child's writing resembles only the
copy-book, of which it is supposed to be an exact
imitation ; soon, however, the round curves
sharpen, the disconnected letters join without any
breaks in the words ; the even lines and dis-
tances are no longer so carefully measured and
considered ; eccentricities of style creep in, with
sundry loops and twirls, giving the whole a grown-
up appearance — a decided individuality of its own.

If the subject of handwriting as a test of

1 6 Handwriting.

character is carefully studied it will be found that
immediate circumstances greatly influence it :
anxiety or great excitement of any kind, illness
or any violent emotion, will for the moment greatly
affect the writing. From handwriting the doctor
can hazard an opinion as to the mental state of
his patient. In all cases of paralysis the writing
is temporarily affected, and the patient is usually
at first deprived of the power of writing ; when the
mind recovers its consciousness and the muscles
their strength, the power returns, but with a feeble-
ness not formerly observed. Writing depends
upon so many things — a firm grasp of the pen, a
pliability of the muscles, clearness of vision and
brain-power — even the writing-materials, pens,
ink and paper, all make a difference. It is not
strange, then, that with so many causes upon
which it depends, writing should be an excellent
test of temperament and bodily health.
- Any school-teacher or head of a college through
whose hands a large correspondence passes,
usually contracts a habit of forming conclusions
as to the mental and moral calibre of the writers,
their social status and natural bias of disposition.
A round, childish handwriting is said to show
conceit and self-satisfaction. Ignorance and con-
ceit are often closely linked together. The
uneducated generally have a very good opinion of
their own personal qualifications. The most

Handwriting. 1 7

youthful form of writing is not, therefore, indica-
tive of talent or general capacity, and seldom
shows any originality.

All needless flourishes and ornamentation are
the result of egotism and vanity. But be it re-
membered that any virtue exaggerated at once
becomes a fault ; that whereas a little conceit is
necessary to stimulate ambition, the same in too
great excess becomes egotistic vanity. Genius is
apt to over-estimate its own depth and originality,
yet without any self-appreciation there is danger
of a lack of effort ; despair prevents perseverance,
and is a bar to any success.

Excitability, hastiness, and impatience are all
seen in the handwriting at a glance. A quick brain
suggests words and sentences so fast, one upon
another, that though the pen races along the page
it cannot write down the ideas quickly enough to
satisfy the author. With a calm, calculating
disposition this frantic haste is neither known
nor understood — such persons do not rush to
conclusions, but ponder over every subject.
Intuitive perception in the excitable person
becomes judgment in a tranquil mind. Temper
depends upon temperament. The crosses of the
letter ' t ' are the index whereby to judge of it.
If these strokes are regular through a whole page
of writing, the writer may be assumed to have an
even-placed temper ; if dashed off at random —

2

1 8 Handwriting .

quick short strokes, somewhat higher than the
letter itself — quick outbursts of anger may be
expected, but of short duration, unless the stroke
is firm and black, in which case great violence may
safely be predicted.

Uncertainty of character and temper is shown
by the variation of these strokes to the letter ' t '.
Sometimes the cross is firm and black, then next
time it is light ; sometimes it is omitted altogether,
varying with each repetition of the letter like the
opinions and sentiments of an undecided person.
The up and down strokes of the letters tell of
strength or weakness of will ; gradations of light
and shade, too, may be observed in these strokes.
The sloping Italian handwriting of our grand-
mothers is just what might be expected from
women refined and sensitive, grounded in several
branches of study, well educated as a whole, but
not especially so in any one particular line. The
absence of any self-assertion is very strongly
marked. The independence of their grand-
daughters can be traced in every line and stroke of
their pens. Little or no distinction is observable
between the writing of young men and women
nowadays. Even the graphologist dare scarcely
hazard an opinion as to the sex of the writer, but
indulges in vague wording, avoiding any direct
use of personal pronouns.

Capital letters tell us many points of interest.

Handwriting. 1 9

By them originality, talent, and mental capacity
are displayed, as well as any latent vulgarity or
want of education. There are two styles of
capital letters at present in use. The high-class
style employed by persons of education is plain
and often eccentric, but without much orna-
mentation. The other may be called the middle-
class, for it is used by servants and tradespeople
having a fair amount of education, mingled with
a good deal of conceited ignorance and false pride.
With these last the capital letters are much

adorned by loops, hooks, and curves, noticeable
principally in the heads of the letters or at their
commencement. Perhaps, for purposes of char-
acter delineation, it will be better to give the
characteristics, pointing out the style and form
of the letters peculiar to each.

It will generally be found that with writing
having much resemblance, a characteristic simi-
larity also exists ; therefore, to become proficient
as a graphologist, a careful study must be made
of the writings of those whose whole life and

2 — 2

20 Handwriting.

character, together with personal peculiarities,
are intimately known and understood, and from
this, conclusions may be drawn and rules arrived
at for future use.

Affection is marked by open loops and a general
slant or slope of the writing. A hard nature,
unsympathetic and unimpressionable, has very
little artistic feeling or love of the fine arts ;
therefore the same things which indicate a soft,
affectionate disposition will also indicate poetry,
music, and painting, or one or other kindred
subjects. The first of these accompanies a
loving, impulsive nature ; with music the im-
pulse is replaced by perseverance ; for natural
genius cannot expand without patient study.
In painting three things are absolutely neces-
sary to produce an artist. Form, colour, light
and shade — all these three will influence the
writing ; but art of any kind is very complex.
Success implies a certain degree of ambition, and
consequent upon it is vanity and egotism ; hence
the artist's signature is generally peculiar and
often unreadable, from its originality, egotism,
and exuberance of creative power.

Imagination and impulse do not tend to im-
prove handwriting. The strokes are too erratic,
and the capital letters never follow the copybook
pattern. Over-haste is visible in every line. A
warm-hearted, impulsive person feels deeply and

Handwriting. 2 1

passionately at the moment of writing, and dashes
off the words without regard to the effect they
will produce upon the reader. What is generally
lacking, is judgment and the power of analytical
thought. These important qualities may be de-
tected in disjoined words, which here and there
may be seen even with a handwriting in which
impulse and sequence of ideas are leading char-
acteristics. The writer has evidently paused to
think, although unaware of it himself. These
breaks give a power of criticism, combined with
clearness of intellect. Without breaks no common-
sense is found, but if they appear too often it shows
a wearying and needless worry over trivial details,
and self- torment as to the opinions of other people.
Truth and straightforwardness give even lines
running across the page and regular distances
from one word to another. Tact is very essential.
This quality requires often slight deceptions to
be allowed or practised, white lies, or delusive
silence ; hence an unevenness in the writing is
observed. It is a deviation, although slight, from
the path of truth, and here and there the letters
rise or fall below the lines. Untruthfulness gives
greater unevenness still; but do not rush to con-
clusions on this point, for an unformed hand-
writing shows this peculiarity very often, being
merely due, not to evil qualities, but to an unsteady
hand employed in work to which it is unused.

2 2 Handwriting.

Very round even writing in which the vowels
are not closed, denotes candour and openness of
disposition, with an aptitude for giving advice,
whether asked or unasked, not always of a com-
plimentary kind. Blunt, crabbed writing suggests
obstinacy and a selfish love of power, without
thought for the feelings of others. True selfishness
gives every curve an inward bend, very marked
in the commencement of words or capital letters.

Perseverance and patience are closely allied.
In the former the letter ' t ' is hooked at the top,
and also its stroke has a dark curved end, showing
that when once an idea has been entertained no
earthly persuasion will alter or eradicate it.
Such writers have strongly-defined prejudices,
and are apt to take very strong dislikes without
much cause.

Calmness and patience also are frequently
linked together — more often in later life, when
adversity has blunted the faculties, or the dull
routine of uneventful existence has destroyed all
romance. Then the writing has short up-and-
down strokes, the curves are round, the bars short
and straight ; there are no loops or flourishes ;
the whole writing exhibits great neatness and
regularity. Economy of living, curiously enough,
is marked by a spare use of ink. The terminals
are abrupt and blunt, leaving off short. Where
economy is the result of circumstances, not dis-

Handwriting. 23

position, only some of the words are thus ended,
while others have open, free curves, and the long
letters are looped. Generosity and liberality may
be seen likewise in the end curve of every word.
Where these characteristics are inconstant and
variable the disposition will be found to be un-
certain — liberal in some matters, while needlessly
economical and stingy in others.

A person fond of society writes the capital
letter ' M ' with the three upper curves on the
same level. If the tail of this letter is carried
far below the line, there is vulgarity of mind
and imperfect education. Bars used instead
of stops are the result of caution. The writer
fears lest his sentences should be misinterpreted by
being run into each other. When a bar is placed
below the signature, it means tenacity of purpose,
coupled with extreme caution ; perhaps, also, a
dread of criticism and adverse opinions. No dots
to the letter ' i ' means negligence, a want of atten-
tion to details, with but a small faculty of obser-
vation. When the dots are placed at random,
neither above nor in proximity to the letter to
which they belong, impressionability, want of re-
flection, and impulsiveness may be anticipated.

Ambition and gratified happiness give to the
whole writing an upward tendency. Hopefulness
lacks the firmness of ambition, and appears only
in the signature which curves upwards, while the

24 Handwriting.

rest of the writing is impulsive, without much
firmness.

Sorrow gives every line of the writing a down-
ward inclination. Temporary affliction will at
once show in the writing : a preoccupied mind,
full of trouble, cares little whether the letter then
written is legible or neat ; hence the writing is
erratic, uncertain, and the confusion of mind is
clearly exhibited in every line. Irritable and
touchy persons slope the flourishes only, such as
the cross of the letter ' t ' and the upper parts of
the capital letters. When the capital letters
stand alone in front of the words, and the final
letters also are isolated, it betokens great creative
power and ideality, such as would form an author
and clever writer.

The most personal part of a letter or document
is, of course, the signature, but alone it is not a
safe guide to character. The lines placed below
or after it tell a great deal more than the actual
name.

A curved bending line, ending in a hook, indi-
cates coquetry, love of effect, and ideality.

An exaggerated, comma-like form of line means
caprice, tempered by gravity of thought, and
versatility of ideas.

An unyielding will — fiery, and at the same £ii»e~.
determined — draws a firm hooked line after the
name.

Handwriting. 2 5

A wavy line shows great variety in mental power,
with originality.

Resolution is shown by a plain line ; and ex-
treme caution, with full power to calculate effect
and reason a subject from every point of view, is
shown by two lines and dots, thus : .

To sum up the matter briefly, it will be
observed that a clever person cares very little
about the form of his writing — it is the matter
alone which concerns him ; whereas, with a
limited brain power, great care as to appearance
is taken. But human nature is never a simple
combination of elements, it is dependable upon
a complexity of changes and chances.

It is said that with everyone a complete change
takes place every seven years. Motives and cir-
cumstances all leave decided marks upon the
character and mind of an individual. Not perhaps
for years will innate virtues or vices become
apparent, which have lain dormant, awaiting
circumstances to develop them.

A collection of any person's old letters is very
curious. Written from earliest childhood to
extreme old age, a veritable life's history lies in the
faded ink ; and to study character from hand-
writing fairly it can only be done from such
authenticated examples.

Old letters written two or three hundred years
ago are of great value for the purpose, because, so

26 Handwriting.

far as they are concerned, all party spirit and
prejudice is dead, buried, and forgotten. Their
biographers no longer fear the consequence of a
too candid and personal account, and are there-
fore more likely to give a just and calm criticism
of character, weighing evenly in the balance both
virtues and vices. With historical characters it
is curious to contrast the contemporary bio-
graphies with the graphologist's opinion of their
handwriting, given without knowing whose the
writing was.

Any collection of old MSS. is interesting, as
showing the various styles of writing in vogue at
different periods. Fashion or circumstances had
some influence on this point. Royal marriages with
foreign princesses brought England into contact
with different nations. Wars in strange lands
introduced alien words into our vocabulary, some
of which speedily became naturalized, while
others, voted slang, remained only for a short
while and then disappeared. New words are
constantly being coined, and take the place of
others. This may seem a trivial matter, and
irrelevant to the subject of old writing, but any
points bearing on the subject must throw new
light upon it and help to elucidate it.

The personality of a writer can never be wholly
separated from his works. And in any question
of date or authenticity of a document being

Handwriting. 2 7

called in question, the value of graphology and
its theories will be found of the utmost impor-
tance ; for the various changes in the style of
handwriting, or in the spelling of words, although
perhaps so minute and gradual as seldom to be
remarked, are, nevertheless, links in a chain which
it would be extremely hard to forge successfully
so as to deceive those acquainted with the matter
and well versed in its peculiarities.

p^5»^i aguLM^Bm Jz

CHAPTER III.

ANGLO-SAXON, NORMAN-FRENCH, LATIN, AND OLD
ENGLISH.

ALTHOUGH we are always told that our
present English language is directly derived
from that of our Saxon forefathers, this informa-
tion gives us very little, if any, help towards
deciphering the old Anglo-Saxon documents. The
Saxons, we are told, were not one nation, but
rather composed of an aggregate of tribes of
Germanic and Scandinavian origin, whose pirati-
cal instincts led them to seek adventure by sea
and land and form new colonies, just as at the
present day Englishmen go forth in search of fame
and fortune in the uttermost parts of the earth.

Thus the Saxon language, although derived
from one identical base, was a collection of
dialects banded together, which, in its educated
and scholastic form, greatly resembled German in
its construction.

Anglo-Saxon, Norman- French, etc. 29

The language of the Anglo-Saxons (so far as
Great Britain is concerned) has been classified

i f

\, ^Jfuminsr i\ yummi yw«?f dKOf-ni- dnno <fi ]tiMiw.ti}CTtf »T &rfdAVO\vtf

) mutwi •^(«.•^oi.^t^Kcn«t)r.\J , ■ -uegii^ut*^ jfoynofrtflritni mt^aoyum yve^iy
Wmwlys (iimii^Wi! pytafynUirtipftjan^ o.we'Vml^vt.Wi *ndn fpifcoptwn-
J»*j tSyi-dliflf <jtwqi«-5? ojmiaire- botnymm jt»tyMr> *»*n»y v ti«tibt 9v«]<t

T-K-E. fJJA jcww .I1V7111 . daiutr' XHoio appcuas.xK.

" wt- WcC.^^rJv lie .f(TIL»tm f.uii^ (iot. mfi annuneqet&u
in villa uotCTC unje n u[LV^^cSltve?tnujUl.(i«lui^-

7<i»uH«r'<iuiirri«lu>Jtrr:-p P .fa'r>«)'(:

(30 1AB^^. 6e&W 3 Jtffe? piftt Com/ .

EXTRACT FROM DOMESDAY.

under three distinct headings, the first being pure
Anglo-Saxon, i.e., the language as spoken by the
first settlers, with an admixture of Celtic or

30 Anglo-Saxon, Norman- French,

British ; secondly, this same combination with
the addition of Danish ; and thirdly, the three
above - named languages combined, with the
further addition of Norman-French, having in
all a Saxon dialect for the basis, to which were
afterwards added new words brought into it by
foreign invaders or emigrants from over the seas.
Ever since the invention of printing great changes
have taken place in our language, and to go back
prior to that epoch reveals greater changes still.

The writings of early chroniclers and poets are
so full of words and phrases now obsolete that
many books and dictionaries have been compiled
to explain their meanings.

The Lord's Prayer, as given in the Durham

Book,* looks to us hopelessly foreign — only a few

words are familiar. The personal pronouns ' us,'

' we,' ' he,' ' him,' and the preposition ' to,' as well

as the conjunction ' and,' are unchanged, but the

verbs are conjugated quite differently to the

correct English of to-day ; still, if we would seek

for a living example resembling old Saxon dialect,

it can easily be found in several parts of England,

such as Devonshire, Dorsetshire, and other

counties, the country-folk still speaking almost

* This is a copy of the Gospels of the Anglo-Saxon period. It
was formerly in the Cottonian Library, now in the Manuscript
Department of the British Museum. It is known as ' Nero D. iv.'
Old Sir Robert Cotton had busts of the Roman Emperors over his
book shelves, and the names survive.

Latin, and Old English. 31

pure Anglo-Saxon, though this is fast dying out
before the advance of education and Board school
science. The Anglo-Saxon alphabetical char-
acters differ only from the Roman in the letter
' w,' written ]> : there are also two additional
double letters — 'th,' represented by the following
letter p, and ' dh,' $, these last being in frequent
use in the construction of words.

The early Saxon handwriting was bold and
clear. Most of it now existing consists of
monastic copies of books or charters. The
Saxons were a clever and industrious people,
plodding and practical. Their abbeys were more
of the nature of large seminaries or colleges, where
learning was carried on ; and in this respect the
northern parts of England were better supplied
than the south, a result caused probably by each
fresh influx of tribes landing on the northern
and eastern coasts of the country, and spreading
inland from thence. There seems to be no doubt
that the reign of King Alfred did much to promote
study and an increased attention to literature,
hitherto neglected except among a few professed
scholars.

A learned king would naturally set the fashion
to his subjects, and Alfred must have possessed
immense energy, for it was an extraordinary thing
for a middle - aged man to be able to educate
himself sufficiently to master the difficulties of a

2,2 Anglo-Saxon, Norman- French,

foreign language so opposed in construction to
his own native tongue as Latin, which in nowise
resembles Saxon. He must have toiled hard to
have completed the many translations from Latin
into Saxon which are accredited to him.

Alfred was a popular hero, and, like all heroes,
was invested by tradition with the credit of every
improvement in literature or art which took place
within his era. Be this as it may, there is no
doubt that he did stimulate his fellow-countrymen
to make efforts towards self-improvement, by
setting them a practical example in himself.
Such examples are rare, unfortunately ; they
must always be productive of good results — an
' ounce of practice is worth a pound of precept.'

From the time of King Alfred's re-introduction
of Latin into this country it gradually gained
ground as the language of scholars. Learned
ecclesiastics coming to England found it con-
venient as the medium for exchange of thoughts
and ideas. It was for many centuries the accepted
' Volapuk,' understood by all who professed to
any learning.

Rome was the light of the western world, the
centre from whence religion and learning was
disseminated to the less enlightened parts of
Europe. Careful study of the old authors necessi-
tated an acquaintance with both Greek and
Latin. The emissaries of the Pope, either as

Latin, and Old English. 33

legates or missionaries, spread all over civilized
Europe, and carried with them the learning of
their age.

Intercourse between England and France was
somewhat checked by dissensions and wars both
at home and abroad, but with the Conquest came
a large body of monks, for the chief wealth of
Normandy was invested in its rich abbeys, from
whence Duke William had borrowed large sums
of money to fit out his expedition upon the
security of his future possession of England.
These loans he honestly and amply repaid by
large grants of land out of his new kingdom ;
hence new abbeys sprang up filled with foreign
monks, who brought over their language, arts and
sciences, to teach in the new country they had
adopted as their own. The language of the
court was of necessity Norman-French, which
differs as much from the French of to-day as
ancient from modern English. But a know-
ledge of French makes these early deeds easy to
understand.

By degrees the Norman-French language came
into use in legal matters, partially superseding
Latin ; probably copies of deeds (rarely copies of
the same deed are preserved) were made in both
languages.

The lower orders of the people clung per-
sistently to their own old Saxon tongue, a fact

3

Ill-f t^fJ

& .9

f i

| ill? ^i&J J^Jl

\%xmt

a

Q

X
o
z

a

z

<

s

o

z

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'J: 5* &| ^^ J

Latin, and Old English. 35

clearly demonstrated by the way the old Saxon
field-names are to the present day retained, and
flowers, animals and matters of everyday country-
life bear names of evident Saxon origin. The
Saxons were a conquered race, and as such
became the servants of their conquerors. The
animals which in life they tended were eaten by
the Norman nobles, who called them, when used
as food, by names of French derivation. Thus
the Saxon 'sheep' became 'mutton'; 'pig' turned
into 'pork'; 'calf into 'veal,' etc. With the names
of many wild flowers French origin is traceable,
especially with cultivated sorts. In Berkshire the
village children call field-daisies ' margs,' abbrevi-
ated, without doubt, from the French marguerite.
Among garden flowers there are pansies, French
pense; gillyflower, girofle, and many others; but
as a whole there are few words of distinctly Latin
origin to be found in the English language relating
to every-day affairs. Norman-French did not come
into immediate use in legal documents after the
Conquest. The earliest deeds of the Norman
kings were written in Latin, but after a while
French superseded it for law work, but only for a
comparatively short period, a statute being passed
in the thirty-sixth year of King Edward III. de-
ciding upon Latin as the law language of the
realm, and from this date the use of Norman-
French died out.

3—2

36 Anglo-Saxon, Norman- French,

The growing dislike of the English to foreign
prelates led to a steady resistance of their claims,
culminating in the Statutes of Mortmain, Provisors
and Praemunire, and finally in the suppression of
all alien priories and foreign cells. This stopped
the influx of French and Italian monks to our
shores ; so it was that, after nearly four centuries,
the Norman-French language died out and was
forgotten. During the Middle Ages, and until
the time of the Reformation, the monasteries still
continued to be the principal seats of learning
throughout the country, and Latin held its ground
among scholars and lawyers. The introduction
of printing, and finally the changes wrought
by the Reformation, disturbed the pre-existing
course of things. English gradually was settling
down into its present form, and about the end
of the fifteenth century it began to be used
for law business transactions more and more.
Latin, like Norman-French, had had its day
and was dying out. Finally, by George III.'s
Act of Parliament the native language was
ordered to be used for law work, and now Latin
has become obsolete, so far as practical work is
concerned ; and understanding old legal Latin —
once a necessity for a lawyer — has now become
an antiquarian profession. One relic of Anglo-
Saxon remained on in our language for many
centuries. The double letter \, ' th,' will be found

Latin, and Old English. 37

in the written copies of monkish chartularies for
place-names beginning with 'th.' Even so late as
the fifteenth century we find it freely employed in
English documents. I possess a copy of the
criminal charges made against De la Pole, Duke
of Suffolk, for high treason, 1450.* Throughout
the|manuscript the Saxon f appears in such words
as ' other,' ' that,' ' the,' etc., which look curious
written ' oper,' 'J>V ' pe.'

About the time when printing was brought over
and practised in England the Saxon p disap-
peared. The p in some words was printed ' y,'
which continued in use until the present century.
I am not aware of any place-names having been
altered by this change of lettering, but it is quite
possible that some changes may have occurred
through it. It would be easy for a person un-
accustomed to the Saxon \ to mistake it for other
letters ; nor would it sound phonetically wrong,
as either ' th,' ' p,' or ' y ' must be followed either
by a vowel or the consonant ' r,' ' ph ' in old
documents being usually replaced by an 'f.'

Of late years many absurd mistakes have been
made by Ordnance Surveyors who, mistaking
the local dialect or from preconceived ideas as to
what the names ought to be, have set down
many incorrectly. On this subject I wrote re-
cently in a paper in the Berkshire Archceological
* Now in the Bodleian Library at Oxford.

38 Anglo-Saxon, Norman-French,

Magazine. A man from the South of England
fails to comprehend the northern or western
dialects. Country-folk from the north cannot
understand a word spoken by southerners;
this also would account for errors. Spelling of
course has altered ; it is no safe guide towards
derivation ; phonetic pronunciation of a word is
more likely to give a clue to the origin. Field-
names have been handed down orally from gene-
ration to generation ; and it is very curious to
observe how faithfully the phonetic sounds have
been preserved among an illiterate people, long
after the meanings of the words have disappeared.
The Saxons named their fields from ordinary
things, or surroundings, or the animals who fed
in the meadows. The following Saxon words
may be found occurring constantly as field-
names :

JEcne, fruitful ; Mcer, field ; JEbesn or JEfesne,

pasture; Ata, Atih, tares, or oats, the latter

were common.
Birce, birch-tree.
Cyrc, Cyrce, Cyrice, Circ, Circe, church, the last two

most common ; Culfre, a dove ; Cealc, chalk ;

Ceorl, churl or husbandman.
Ent, a giant ; Eorisc, a bulrush : Errich, stubble ;

Enid or Ened a duck ; Emn, even.
Fearras, Ferris, oxen.

Latin, and Old English. 39

Fearh, a little pig ; Fearh-Cwcel, swine-fever.

Getreminc, fortress ; Gat or Yat, a goat.

Halga, a saint ; halig, holy ; Hyd, a hide ; Ham,
home, homestead ; Hurst, or Hyrst, a wood ;
Holt, a grove ; Hleotan, to cast lots (meadows
were held in lots, or allotments, from a very
early period, and so continued up to the time
of the Enclosure Acts) ; Hluton, part allotted ;
Halm, stubble.

Ith yrnth, arable ; lit , a sow.

Ley, Lea, Leaze or Lay, Lye, meadow or grass-
land.

Neolnes, more properly spelt Neowlnes, an abyss.

On-cel, a burning.

Rene, a course ; Riip, harvest.

Sul, a plough; Stret, or Street, a street or public
highway.

Wong, a meadow; Welig, a willow; Wegleast, a
going out of the way ; Wer, an enclosure.

The law- Latin, as used in England, degenerated
greatly; it became interspersed with words of
native origin, Latinized by the lawyer. Old
court-rolls especially are full of obsolete words ;
so too are the public rolls, but there are now
many dictionaries explaining their meanings,
although, of course, here and there an unknown
word may occur, yet the context will usually ex-
plain or help towards its significance. As a

4-0 Anglo-Saxon, Norman-French, etc.

whole, the English language has changed more
during the present century than at any time
of the preceding ages. Railway and telegraph
have brought all parts of the kingdom into closer
contact, and also with foreign countries, which
would account for constant alterations in language
and customs.

The legal Latin became, finally, merely a series
of mechanical forms ; these at last were translated
into English. For this reason a careful study of
the wording of a deed of the eighteenth century
in English will show that it is the counterpart of
the same class of document in its older Latin
form.

CHAPTER IV.

OLD DEEDS.

AMONG old family papers it is rare to meet
with many dating further back than the
Reformation ; first of all, this may be accounted
for by the enormous amount of land possessed
by the monks, who, instead of having to search
through deeds, entered these grants and gifts of
property into their charter-book. The monastic
estates, after the Dissolution, were managed
through the Augmentation Office; many of the
original deeds were destroyed or lost in the
general confusion, and a new distribution of the
lands took place by the king irrespective of
the former owners, whose claims were totally
ignored, although in such grants or deeds of gift
the name of the monastery formerly owning the
property is usually named.

The king must have realized large sums of
money by these transactions, which were carried

42 Old Deeds.

out through his commissioners or agents, and not
usually granted direct from the Crown ; very little
of the land confiscated from the abbeys was re-
tained as royal property, but appears to have
been almost immediately sold or granted away.

But to begin from the oldest reliable period at
which deeds may refer to, is to go back to the
Norman Conquest, or rather, to the time when
the lands had been distributed among the
Norman noblemen, as described in the famous
Domesday Book, compiled it is said between
1080 and 1085. Reference is therein made to
previous Saxon possessors ; but only in very few
instances can any certain information be obtained
of private property prior to the eleventh century.

Private deeds do exist between the time of
William I. and Richard I. ; from this latter king's
reign, about a.d. 1179, legal memory dates; but
usually the earliest family deeds are of Edward L,
because then it was that the legal era was fixed to
commence. This king has been, so far as regards
manorial rights and customs, rightly called the
' English Solon.' He passed innumerable Acts of
Parliament on the subject of legal matters ; he
revised the whole of the national laws, retaining
but improving existing arrangements. A most
interesting account of early English law and
manorial customs is published by the Selden
Society. It is very rare indeed to discover private

Old Deeds. 43

deeds earlier than this ; but, of course, every rule
has its exception.

To prove a title to property it is now only
requisite to show a twenty years' possession of it.
Papers forming the title deeds to farms or small
holdings are seldom of any great age. The
custom of depositing estate records in the care
of the family lawyer has tended to preserve a few
deeds; but, on the other hand, has resulted in
much wholesale destruction of useless but curious
documentary evidence.

Parchment being an animal substance (usually
made from the skin of sheep), if kept in a damp
place, soon begins to decay and become offensive,
mites readily attack it, dirt and dust accumulate
rapidly on its external woolly surface — all these
make a search among hoards of old deeds any-
thing but a pleasant or a cleanly occupation.

The usual storehouse for such collections was
some unused garret or stable-loft, where rats and
mice ran riot and birds flew in and out as they
liked. Forgotten, perhaps, for several generations,
the old papers lay untouched till death or removal
brought changes, and the deeds were either placed
in safer keeping, or else — alas ! the most usual
course — were consigned to the flames as useless
rubbish.

Even now lawyers find great difficulty in pre-
serving and storing the deeds entrusted to their

44 Old Deeds.

charge. The dangers of fire and damp are con-
flicting, and to avoid the one may bring about
greater risk from the other cause. Vast numbers
of deeds have been sold when a lawyer's office
has been broken up. These papers, having lain
for years unclaimed until the ownership was lost
or forgotten, finally were sold to some anti-
quarian bookseller or antiquary, or else the skin
was cleansed and used again ; parchment being
a valuable substance. It is employed in many
trades. From it size is prepared. Gold-beaters
employ it largely, and also to the bookbinders'
trade it is essential, besides having many other
and varied uses.

The quality of parchment varies much. That
upon which early deeds, those about the thirteenth
century, are written, is in small pieces, woolly in
texture and of a dark brown shade. In the six-
teenth century the sheets are larger, smoother,
and yellow, becoming whiter in colour and more
even as its preparation was better understood and
practised.

Vellum was a finer sort of parchment prepared
from the skins of very young or still-born animals.
Of it the old manuscript books were made,
adorned with illuminations and miniature paint-
ings, which required a fine, smooth surface, and
vellum was free from the flaws which frequently
occur in the skins of mature animals.

Old Deeds. 45

With the history of paper-making we have
nothing to do. Paper was known as early as the
thirteenth century, but for law work in England
it was seldom, if ever, employed before the four-
teenth century. The earliest known examples are
described as being made of silk manufactured
abroad, where it was used for illuminated work in
place of vellum — at least, so Prou states, but does
not tell us of any notable examples.

The history of English-made paper is some-
what obscure. Ordinary books published for the
enlightenment of the young state that the first
English paper-mill was erected at Dartford, in
Kent, by Speilman, a German, in 1588. This,
however, must be wrong, for in that popular
educator of the past generation, the Saturday
Magazine, a short account is given of early
paper and its water-marks, and John Tate is
named as having a mill at Hertford, his device
being a star of five points enclosed within a
double circle. John Tate the younger is here
stated to have made the paper for the first book
printed on English-made paper about the year
1496. It was written in Latin, and entitled
' Bartholomeus de Proprietatibus Rerum.' His
mark upon it was a wheel. This same account
goes on to say that the paper used by the early
printers bore great variety of marks — the ox-
head, with the star between the horns; the black
letter 1$ ; the shears ; an open hand, surmounted

46 Old Deeds.

by a star ; a collared dog's head, with a trefoil
above it ; a crown, an orb, a shield charged with
a bend, and many other devices. Hone, in his
' Everyday Book,' also gives a few other marks.
He mentions the orb as a foreign paper-mark
existing as early as 1301, and says it is the
' oldest known mark.'

Hand-paper is the kind usually found used for
early documents. It was a convenient size for
court-rolls or legal writings. The name arose
from its water-mark, that of an open hand with a
star above the middle finger. This is found both
in England and Germany. Its date of manu-
facture was certainly older than 1450. The actual
device varied. Sometimes the fingers were raised
in blessing, sometimes it was a hand encased in
a glove or gauntlet. The star had sometimes five
and at others six points.

On some coarse whitish-brown paper of 1465 a
garter was used ; about the same date a bull or
bull's head appears. These were detached sheets,
but probably there was no distinction then
between book or letter paper.

A careful study of paper-marks would be in-
teresting and valuable if the authenticity or age
of old papers were doubted, though the question
of forgery scarcely ever arises, for so much know-
ledge and ingenuity would be required to produce
a manuscript which would deceive an adept and

Old Deeds. 47

pass muster as a veritable antique, that fraud of
this kind is well-nigh impossible.

Paper was not known in France, and conse-
quently not used, before 1130. It did not reach
as far north as Normandy until the fourteenth
century; therefore it is improbable that it found
its way into England till after this date, or, if so,
only in very small quantities. The oldest paper
is coarse and rough, scarcely sized at all, so that
the ink sank into it like blotting-paper, making
erasures impossible.

Supposing even that paper was made in
England in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries,
the quantities produced here were very small and
inadequate to meet the demand ; hence the chief
supply was of foreign manufacture even until a
comparatively recent period.

The Netherlands and Germany were the great
paper-producing countries. It was a state pri-
vilege, and the water-marks used were either the
arms of the royal patron or a crest or badge of
the manufacturer, so by this means the precise
locality of some of these ancient manufacturers
may be ascertained.

The history of old paper-marks sadly needs a
Chaffers or a Cripps to investigate the matter.
No such collection has ever been attempted, nor
has the subject hitherto met with the attention it
demands and deserves. Perhaps, now that anti-

48 Old Deeds.

quarianism is becoming so fashionable, this, like
other kindred sciences, will find some followers.

Another important part of a deed is the ink
with which it was written. Each scribe had his
own particular receipt for making it, the principal
ingredients being oak galls and sulphate of iron.
Many chemicals are recommended as restoratives
for faded ink, but these should be avoided as far
as possible, as they are liable to stain and dis-
figure the parchment, and in the end make
matters worse. Familiarity with particular
handwritings after some practice will enable the
reader to make out otherwise unintelligible words
without any other assistant than a powerful
magnifying glass.

If the ink is very faint the simplest and most
harmless restorative is sulphate of ammonia ;
but its loathsome smell once endured is not easily
forgotten ; the experiment in consequence is very
seldom repeated, for the result is scarcely good
enough to risk a repetition of so horrible a smell.

Coloured inks or pigments were seldom, if ever,
employed for legal documents. The use of these
was restricted to the cloister, requiring manipula-
tion by an illuminator instead of a mere scribe.
Red, blue and green were in use ; these were
mineral colours. The red was composed either of
red lead or oxide of iron, the green from copper,
and the blue from lapis lazuli finely powdered, or

Old Deeds. 49

else it, too, like the green, was prepared from an
oxide of copper.

Illuminating was a separate profession apart
from that of writing. The charter or missal was
finished by the scribe, and then handed over to
the artist to be adorned with fanciful capital
letters and elaborate scroll-works. Such orna-
mentation was unnecessary for legal documents,
yet sometimes these had fancy headings, which,
like the illuminations, were put in after the
writing was finished, as is proved by the occa-
sional omission of them, although space is left
where they ought to have been filled in.

Seals and sealing-wax deserve a few words.
These came into use gradually. The earliest
deeds are very small, and have very small in-
significant seals.

It is said that neither the Saxon or Norman
noblemen could sign their own names, but instead
employed the Christian sign of the cross (still in
use among the illiterate) as their pledge of good
faith, and to witness their consent and approval.
The Normans perhaps introduced the use of seals
as appendices to deeds as a further proof that the
deed itself was approved and executed. A man's
seal or signet was always regarded as his most
sacred possession. It was destroyed after death
to avoid its being used for fraudulent purposes.
The use of signet-rings is very ancient. Many

4

50 Old Deeds.

old Saxon and Roman signets have been dug up
from time to time in various parts of England ;
but small private seals bearing devices do not
appear to have been attached to deeds earlier
than the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

Many of the large wax seals are very beautiful,
but few, alas ! exist in any state of perfection.
The wax used for them was either its natural
colour or else a sealing-wax of a very dark green,
almost black, or red ; white, also, was used, now
discoloured by age into a dingy yellow. Yellow
wax was also common. Besides the royal seals,
each abbey had its own particular seal, upon which
was either a view of the abbey, a portrait of its
patron saint, or its badge or shield. Many of these
are described by Dugdale in the ' Monasticon,'
but he was unable to discover the devices pertain-
ing to the lesser houses or cells. The fashion for
seals died out, till at last only royal grants or
similar documents of the sixteenth century have
them attached. In the Georgian period we find
small private seals placed on the margin of
deeds. These were not always the arms and
crest of the person against whose signature they
appear, but perhaps belonged to the lawyer or
one of the contracting parties. Here it is that a
knowledge of heraldry is extremely useful.

The size and shape of a deed at first glance
goes far with the experienced reader to determine

Old Deeds, 51

its age, even before a single word of it has been
read ; likewise the general aspect will give a slight
hint as to the possible contents without decipher-
ing any of it.

The deeds relative to the earliest grants of land
are very small, a marked contrast to the volu-
minous sheets of parchment considered necessary
to a modern conveyance or deed. The writing
often was minute, but each letter was carefully
formed. Many early deeds are in far better
preservation than some of those written several
centuries later, when less attention was paid to
the materials on which they were indited, or the
ink used.

CHAPTER V.

LAW TECHNICALITIES.

THE two chief divisions into which all law
deeds may be roughly classified are the
deed-poll and the indenture. The former is a
square piece of parchment, made by one person,
such as a will or a bond ; while the indenture was
the work of several parties. Of this latter kind
are deeds of trusteeship, marriage settlements,
mortgages, and sales or transfers of land.

The indenture was so called from the fact that
its upper edge was vandyked, or indented — a very
secure but primitive method of testing authen-
ticity ; each party had a copy. These duplicates
were written on a single strip of parchment
merely cut asunder afterwards, through a word
written between the two copies, such as ' chiro-
graphum,' so that when required to be produced
as evidence the two divided portions and words
would fit each other exactly — indisputable evidence
of their originality, both simple and ingenious.

Law Technicalities. 53

A very common form of deed, met with among
title-deeds, is the ' Fine,' technically so-called from
its opening sentence : ' Hie est finalis concordia
facta in curia Domini Regis '; the sovereign's
name follows with the year of accession, after
which are the names of the buyer and seller of
the property, a full description of the amount of
acreage, tenements, etc. After warranting the
whole for life to its purchaser, the deed concludes
with the sum of money paid for the property ;
this is written in words, not figures. These deeds
are more puzzling to amateurs than any other.
The ' Fines ' are narrow strips of parchment,
two in number ; they are closely covered with
black lettering, making them at first difficult
to decipher.

This transfer of land by ' fine ' originated at
first from an actual suit at law commenced to
recover possession of the lands, and by this means
to establish a clear indisputable title to it ; in
course of time the suit was discontinued, but the
form of wording was retained by custom.

' A " fine," ' says Blackstone, ' is so called
because it puts an end to the suit (from the Latin
word finis, an end), which, when once decided,
puts an end not only to that suit, but also to all
other controversies concerning the same matter,
for by this means an absolute sale was effected,

54

Form of Fine.

Sfarm of Jfiiu.

I. — Hxc est fmalis Concordia facta in Curia Domini Regis apud
. . in . . . anno regni Regis . . .

2. — Coram .
sentibus . . .

et aliis fidelibus domini Regis tunc ibi prse-

3. — Inter A B, petentem, et C D, tenentem [per E F, positum
loco ipsius C D, ad lucrandum vel perdendum] . . .

4.— De

In terra, in prata, in pascuis, in
molendinis, in stagnis, et in omnibus
pertinentiis ejusdem terrse.

5. — Unde placitum fuit inter

eos in Curia domini Regis,

scilicet

a

Unde recognitio de morte
antecessors summonita fuit inter
eos in priefata Curia, viz. ,

6. — Quod idem 1
C D, concessit- ei-
dem A B, et he-
redibus suis totam
terram, etc.

Quod idem 1 C T),
quietum clamavit
pro se et heredibus
suis totum jus et
clamium qd. habuit
in tota terra, etc.

[The appurtenances are here
sometimes set out at length.]

Quod idem 1 C D, re-
cognovit totam terram,
etc., esse jus et hered-
itatem ipsius A B [ut
ilia qu<e idem A B,
habuit de dono pras-
dicti C D] et terram
illam quietam clamavit
a se et heredibus suis
imperpetuum.

7. — Pradicto A B, et hered-
ibus suis imperpetuum.

Et assignatis suis prseter
quam viris religiosis.

8. — Et pro hac

9. — Concess- 1 recog- 1 rtmi
ione 1 nitione | ione

5S-

1 quieta cla-
1 rnnntia

fine et
concordia.

10. — Prsedictus A B.

1 Idem, or prsedictus, or preefatus, or memoratus.

Form of Fine.

55

II.— Dedit

predicto

p < i
3 ra

cuo-p-

K » n> «

C D.

a an

cssO

? 3 i&-9

. . solidos

unam ju-

" 3
p ra
3 en

ietum cla
totam terr

o in X. pr
suis C D.

ncessit p
us suis .
scil . .
terram]
en menti

esterling . .

vencam ...

ra 2

redicto
. . acrs
[or tot
[in sut
oned).

marcas ar-
genti . . be-

unum
ostorium

»3

mavit
am qua
aedicto

santia . . de-

sorum

sr >

5iB "O

narios.

9*>

ra 3 §"

ra 1 'S rt

°-S S ra

E8 «.

^■o

o

sr ra ra

usas

3 gfl

he-
ctse
dic-
tion

3 3

<t> S. n

12.— Et praedictus C D,
priEdicta tenementa, etc.,
[qui de stirpe suo exierint.

et heredes ejus warantizabunt eidem A B,
cum pertinentiis contra omnes homines
]

[Here the fine, especially if it is of early date, will end ; but in
cases of subinfeudation, where rent or services are reserved, the
following forms occur after 6.]

13. — Habendfa] et tenend[a] eidem A B, de prcedicto C D, et
heredibus suis imperpetuum (or tota vita sua).

14. — Reddendo inde per ann. (tota vita ipsius) . . . .0. ad
terminos scilicet medietatem ad festum S ci . . . . et aliam [alteram]
ad festum S cl . . . . pro omnibus serviciis consuetudinibus et exac-
tionibus ad prsedictum C D, et heredes ejus pertinentibus.

15. — Et faciendo inde Capitalibus dominis de feodo (or, feodi
illius) pro praedicto C D, omnia alia servicia quae ad ilia tenementa,
etc., pertinent [salvo forinseco servitio].

16. — If the grant was for the tenant's life only, this occurs : — Et
post decessum ipsius A B, praedicta tenementa cum pertinenciis
integre revertentur ad praedictum C D, quieta de heredibus ipsius
A B, tenenda de capitalibus dominis feodi illius per servitia quae ad
ilia pertinent.

17. — If the rent was reserved during the grantor's life only, then
this : — Et post decessum ipsius C D, praedictus A B, et heredes ejus
erunt quieti de solutione praedicti redditus imperpetuum.

-If the fine is to entail the property the habendum clause will

eisdem A B, et E F,
eidem A B, et heredibus
et hered . . de corporibus eorum inter eos procreatis.
quos idem A B, de corpore E F, uxoris ejus [legitime] procrea-
verit.

run thus : — Habendum et tenendum

I

56 Law Technicalities.

and all previous claims upon the property were
made void.'

Sale by fine is of very ancient date. Instances
of it are said to be known prior to the Norman
invasion. We may, therefore, conclude that it was
probably an old Saxon custom, or was devised in
later times as a certain means to avoid dispute
and disagreement arising from an imperfect title
of possession.

There are several legal varieties of 'fines,' but
these are of little consequence to the antiquary,
whose interest lies only in the names, dates, and
localities mentioned, and, so long as the land
changed its ownership, cares little about the
technical process by which the transfer was made.

Another way of making a good title so as to
legalize and effect a complete sale of property was
that known as 'Sale by Recovery.' This also con-
sisted of a law-suit, at first real, then imaginary.

The prescribed form was very complicated.
Explanations of it are to be found in most books
on law subjects, but the matter lies in a nutshell.
One man desired to sell certain land which
another man was anxious to purchase ; where-
upon the would-be purchaser issued a writ, in
which he pretended to claim the land ; at this
stage of the affair a third party, not really con-
cerned in any way in it, was brought forward to
warrant the title of the real owner, who then

Law Technicalities.

57

mcliiagn&nme

mf

207/^

<T>,

FORM OF FINE.

58 Law Technicalities.

came forward bringing a witness proving owner-
ship to his property; thus an undisputable title
to the land was established. A deed of recovery
is then issued, rehearsing the whole transaction,
agreeing that a certain sum of money, equivalent
to the value of the land, should be paid by the
purchaser ; and here the bargain was concluded,
and the curtain fell on the legal farce.

Some of these recovery deeds are quite works
of art. They are written in courthand, on large
squares of parchment, smooth and white. The
heading and capital letter are ornamented with
scroll-work in pen and ink. Generally an en-
graved portrait of the reigning sovereign was
added. Part of this ornamentation was done by
hand and the rest completed with steel engraving.
The most elaborate deeds are those of the Stuart
monarchs, especially towards the end of the
seventeenth century, but after the time of the
second George these well-executed deeds dis-
appear.

The oldest statute relating to Recoveries of
which I find any mention is of the commence-
ment of the reign of Henry VII., but I have not
met with any as early in date as this.

A beginner finds much difficulty in deciding
between deeds of sale or appointment of trustees
for the safe custody of land to secure marriage
portions and deeds of mortgage ; all these three

Law Technicalities. 59

deeds are, in point of size and general outline,
nearly identical ; the experienced lawyer can
detect them at once ; he needs only to study what
is called the operative part of the document,
avoiding any waste of time which wading through
the technical phrases involves.

One of the commonest forms of deeds met with
relative to the sale of land are those known as
' Lease and Release,' a method invented by
Sergeant Moore in the reign of Henry VIII. ,
which, from its simplicity, speedily became very
popular, and superseded the other forms of sale.

The principal deeds referring to a Lease and
Release are two in number. The smaller of these
is generally found wrapped up within the larger
parchment, as the two had to be kept together,
being in reality part and parcel of each other.
The smaller parchment was the lease drawn up
between the parties; by it a formal lease for a
year of the premises or land was granted by the
owner to the purchaser, but no mention of any
rent or sum of money is made in it, and herein is
the difference between the sale-lease and an
ordinary lease, for in this latter both the term of
years and the yearly rental are expressly named.

The ' Release,' or larger parchment, is dated a
day following the lease which it cancels, hereby
gaining its name of ' release.' It is in reality the
actual deed of sale, for the price paid for the land

60 Law Technicalities .

will be found in it, and a full and complete
warranty securing it for ever to the purchaser.

An ordinary lease of premises is worded simi-
larly to the above, but differs from it in several
ways ; usually it is a larger sheet of parchment.
The term of years varies from three, five, seven,
to twenty-one, at a fixed rent paid either half-
yearly or quarterly at the four principal feasts,
Lady Day, or the Feast of the Annunciation, the
Feast of St. John, or Midsummer, St. Michael and
All Angels, better known as Michaelmas, and the
Feast of the Nativity, popularly called Christmas
Day. These deeds commence with the date of
the day, month and year, followed by the names
of the persons contracting the agreement, with
those of their co-trustees, or witnesses, usually
selected from among relatives or connections by
marriage, or else immediate neighbours. An
exact terrier of the land is given, its locality,
field-names, and acreage. Three parts of the
way down the sheet of parchment will be found
the rent and term of years for which the land is
granted, together with stipulations as to repairs,
rights of ingress and egress ; any services, cus-
toms or heriots, whether due in kind or by pay-
ment ; last of all comes the warrant against
intruders. Of course, with deeds of sale there are
other legal documentary forms, with variations of
wording, but the two last above described are
those generally met with.

Law Technicalities. 6 1

The oldest form of sale is called a ' feoffment ' or
grant. Externally it differs little in appearance
from a ' fine,' at least as regards its earliest form,
both being very small closely-written deeds ; the
first was in the set lawyer type of handwriting,
while a ' fine ' was indited in courthand.

A ' feoffment,' or grant, was the oldest and
simplest form of document ; but in later times it
was followed by a deed ' of Uses ' which required
many other deeds to follow in its wake before a
permanent and satisfactory sale was effected.

It is all these legal formalities which make
the reading of old deeds so unnecessarily con-
fusing ; their intricacies can only be mastered by
careful study of books on legal matters, and a
comparison of the several kinds of deeds above
enumerated. A mortgage deed differs from the
sales or leases in several particulars ; firstly, the
term of years granted is usually absurdly long,
nine hundred or a thousand years, perhaps ;
while in lieu of money, the nominal rent of one
peppercorn yearly, or some equally insignificant
equivalent was demanded. In place of the rent
in an ordinary lease, the real reason of the
mortgage is given in full, with the date and
appointed place where and when the borrowed
money is to be repaid. Often the vicarage, or
the parson's house, was chosen — perhaps con-
sidered as an additional guard against fraud,

62 Law Technicalities.

and that the clergyman as a witness, being a
disinterested party, would see justice done on
both sides. No mortgage deeds are old ; the
older ones, if they existed, were probably destroyed
as soon as the transaction was finished. Most
of those found among family papers are of the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and refer to
small pieces of land or cottages, showing that
even then the small owners became involved in
debts and difficulties, being obliged to raise
money upon their holdings until finally the land
itself had to be sold to satisfy the demands of the
creditors, the purchaser usually being the nearest
large landed proprietor, who paid a better price
for what would join on to and complete the area
of his estate. These small holdings had probably
been accumulated bit by bit out of the waste.
First, perhaps, the settler rigged up a primitive
dwelling, or hut ; the old tradition being that if
a roofed dwelling could be erected in one night
a claim to the land was thereby established. If
undisturbed, the squatter would gradually extend
his boundaries; but a small rent was generally
demanded by the lord of the manor as an ac-
knowledgment of the encroachment ; these little
holdings are called ' key-holdings,' and are to be
found in all parts of England.

At present there is a growing desire to increase
the number of small proprietors ; ' fashion,' it is

Law Technicalities. 63

said, 'repeats itself periodically.' Former ex-
perience showed the result of small holders to be
a failure ; no land, however small in acreage, can
be worked without capital ; a succession of bad
seasons cause immediate loss and continuous
outlay without a compensating return ; debts
once begun, are apt to accumulate ; all trades are
worked cheaper on a wholesale scale. Bit by bit,
as failure comes, the small pieces of land will roll
up into large properties again, like balls of quick-
silver separated only for awhile.

Many of the deeds of mortgage are sad and
silent witnesses of the gradual decay and down-
fall of old families.

The squire raised money to pay off trusts,
legacies, and dowers. He pledged his mansion ;
and in the inventory of his household effects
we can study many queer facts. Our ancestors'
homes were scantily furnished ; such lists surprise
us, for they show what a very small amount of
furniture was formerly considered necessary to
render a house habitable.

Among family papers there is often another class
of deeds altogether : one is a small square piece
of parchment, with a huge seal attached ; this is
often enclosed in a rough tin case or box. These
are advowson deeds, or presentation of Church
preferment. The gifts of many Church livings
are in private hands. It was originally an heredi-

64 Law Technicalities.

tary property, and there are cases of it of very
great antiquity ; but private family deeds refer-
ring to church property are seldom found earlier
than the Jacobean period, and very seldom as old
as that.

The earliest presentations or appointments to
parochial duty were no doubt purely ecclesiastical,
but with the Norman accession the secular and
ecclesiastical affairs merged into closer proximity;
it was considered a religious privilege to rebuild
or erect a church. This the lord of the manor
generally undertook, or perhaps originally as a
private chapel or chantry. The appointment of an
officiating priest became an ecclesiastical matter,
being often granted to the monasteries by the
patrons. To avoid the encroachment of lay in-
terference, Thomas a Beckett first ordered that
no clergyman should be instituted to a living
without a bishop's approval and permission ; but
there were often disputes on this subject. Few
neighbourhoods existed without a monastery some-
where in the locality, and from the nearest religious
house a candidate was probably selected ; finally,
the right of presentation was claimed by the
monastery, with whom it may have, by custom or
by deed of gift, previously rested. Some education
and a knowledge of Latin was essential for a priest,
and education was almost entirely confined to the
monks or their pupils. Thomas a Beckett, as

Law Technicalities. 65

archbishop, issued his mandate on the subject of
parochial presentations as a means of retaining
such institutions in episcopal hands, and so avoid-
ing any appeals to the Pope which might be made
by his legates or the abbots. With the monas-
teries, the chantries also passed away, soon being
forgotten ; numberless small unbeneficed chapels
were then allowed to fall into ruins ; the sites
even of these now having been lost.

Deeds recounting the appointment of chantry
priests are rare, and always possess some points
of interest ; often chantry priests were appointed
by bequest, and sums of money left for their
maintenance. These appear, however, to have
been entirely distinct from the parish priest,
although perhaps the office may eventually have
merged into one and the same.

There seems from earliest times to have existed
a jealousy between Cathedral bodies and the
monks ; but as the monastic orders waxed more
and more wealthy and influential, we lose sight
of the contention, and on all questions of early
Church history there yet needs an impartial writer
to decide many matters which at present are
still uncertain, and are viewed by different writers
according to their own particular religious bias,
whether Anglican or Roman ; hence, as history,
they are too prejudiced to be entirely relied upon.

A sheriff formerly was the most important

5

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SHERIFF'S ROLL (NEVILLE M.SS.).

Law Technicalities. 67

personage in his county, being the ambassador or
representative of the sovereign. He was ap-
pointed directly by the Crown ; even at the present,
day the names of three county gentlemen are
written down and supposed to be presented to
the Queen, who pricks the name of the man
chosen to be sheriff; but really the names follow
in sequence, each out-going sheriff adding a fresh
name to the list previous to his own being erased
as having served his turn.

The formal deed of appointment as sheriff was
a narrow parchment strip, with a fine seal attached
to it ; his discharge from office was a very unim-
portant-looking document.

The sheriff's roll was the yearly bill of expenses
incurred in the king's name by his sheriff or
representative ; as a rule they are not very
interesting, although here and there the names of
men appointed to local offices may appear, facts
which might interest the local historian ; but he
would have to wade through the contents of
many rolls before he extracted any information
worth his attention, and much time would have
to be expended over such a search. These rolls
are long broad strips of parchment stitched
together ; the upper edge is sometimes cut square,
and at others cut into a point or peak.

The wording runs as follows :

' In Magno Rotulo de anno . . . Regis ... in Comitatu.'

5—2

68 Law Technicalities.

A list of the sheriffs of England (Henry I. to
fourth year of Edward III.) is to be found in the
thirty-first report, page 262, of the deputy keeper
of the Public Records. In some counties, sheriff-
lists with additional genealogies and notes have
been compiled, giving a very good county history
of the oldest families of the shire.

A royal pardon was a deed-poll with a
beautiful seal attached to it. It commenced
with the sovereign's name. The writing was
exact and well executed. The deed was divided
into clauses or sections, the commencing word of
each being written in very clear black letter.
After the word ' Sciatis ' comes the royal license
and the name of its recipient, who is forgiven ' all
rebellion and insurrection against the Crown, all
homicide, felony, robbery or participation with
such,' and the pardoned subject is permitted to
retain his possessions ; the word ' Perdonamus '
coming about the centre of the document.

Unfortunately no information is given in the
Charter in any way as to the particular cause for
pardon being granted or the offence committed.
This can only be guessed at by the help of English
history, and a probable reason be assigned from
among the many disputed accessions, civil wars,
religious controversies of bygone centuries, all
probable sources of high treason against the
Crown.

Law Technicalities. 69

Few old families were exempt from charges of
treason, if they chanced to take any part in
public affairs or were known to have been stanch
adherents to prohibited religion.

A bond is a small paper or parchment — on one
side written in English, on the other in Latin —
the promise to repay or pay money due ; generally
the bond is in Latin, and the conditions of it
written in English. Bonds were made out on the
sale of property, or for mortgages or legacies : they
occur in numbers among family papers.

These are the principal kinds of deeds met
with, being the commonest legal forms. If others
are found of an unusual character they should be
put aside for closer investigation when practice
has given greater experience, or be submitted to
an expert for examination.

CHAPTER VI.

MANOR AND COURT ROLLS.

The oldest account of an estate is to be obtained,
not from deeds of purchase and mortgage, but
from its own private records, called court rolls,
a most curious class of documents, puzzling to
the antiquary because they contain local words
obsolete and not recognisable through derivation.
Manor rolls are a study in themselves, a subject
hitherto overlooked. They give us an insight
into the most primitive form of local government,
showing the manner in which lawlessness and dis-
regard of laws were kept under, before a regular
magisterial jurisdiction came into existence. The
local manor court occupied the position and did
the work now undertaken by the magistrates,
County Court judges, and County Councils. When
complaints are raised as to an excessive imposition
of fines for trivial misdemeanours by any of these
modern means of justice, I would advise the com-

Manor and Court Rolls. 71

plainants to study some old court rolls, wherein
may be read, ' Fines imposed for offences no longer
punishable.' The villager was fined if he kept
dogs or pigeons, for trespass in the woods, stealing
brushwood, for illegal fishing, for fighting, for
allowing animals to stray and become impounded.
Nor, unless he was a freedman, was he allowed to
marry or give in marriage without his lord's per-
mission. All this sounds very arbitrary and
severe ; in reality it probably was not so. The
bond between landlord and tenant must have been
a very close one. They were drawn into near
connection one with another ; the well-being of
one meant the welfare of the other. Nor was the
meting forth of justice left solely in the hands of
the lord of the manor, but rather to the twelve
jurymen who formed the court itself. Certainly,
this self-government opened a means for unfair
influence and revenge of petty quarrels. This
was guarded against as far as possible. A very
common item brought before the court was the
accusation of wrongful information laid by a man
against his neighbour in direct opposition to the
ninth commandment.

There were two sections of manor courts — the
Court Leet and the Court Baron. The former
dealt with offences committed by the tenantry, and
contained much that is entertaining and curious ;
the other was occupied with the tenants and their

72 Manor and Court Rolls.

holdings, of which they had every year to give
account to the lord of the manor. Upon the
death of a tenant, or the expiration of the lease,
new presentments were made to the landlord for
admission to the premises, or a fresh life added
to the lease from time to time. In these rolls we
find notices of heriots and other old services due
from the tenants of certain lands ; indeed, these
old customs are not yet wholly extinct, though
they have frequently fallen into abeyance. On
some estates, heriots are still due, but, as a rule,
have for many generations been compounded for
by a money payment, just in the same way that
feudal service passed into small sums of money
and finally died out, or eventually took the form
of money rent.

On many farms it was part of the rent to give
the landlord yearly geese or cheese. In a small
farm of ours in Cheshire the tenant had to give
a cheese yearly, cart coals, keep a dog and a
fighting cock for his landlord. All these dues are
now gradually being given up.

The manorial history of England would carry
us back very far did we attempt to trace it to its
earliest beginnings. Perhaps the very first step
towards it was the settlement of the Saxon tribes,
who, in appropriating and distributing the land,
laid the foundation of hereditary ownership.
There is no rule or limit as to how many manors

Manor and Court Rolls. 73

there might be in each parish. Clearly the parish
was the older division of the two ; nor can the
creation of a manor be dated in any way, for many
of the old manors were subsequently split up into
two or more lesser ones. The affixes or manorial
names are known to have, in some instances, varied
with the family who held the land. Almost without
exception, these manorial names were directly de-
rived from the possessors. Few are older than the
Norman period, perhaps having supplanted those
in existence previously. Where double parochial
names are used, the first is usually Saxon, the affix
being a Norman addition, showing the fusion of the
two races, which, though living in close proximity,
were yet totally distinct from each other.

During the Middle Ages, manors were further
subdivided, easily to be accounted for in this
way : The owner of a manor was at first start the
tenant of some wealthy and powerful nobleman,
who, owning vast tracts of land, sub-let it out in
manors, which were after some generations bought
outright, or looked upon almost as freehold. The
tenant was the resident squire of the place, living
on the land, and farming it with the assistance of
his children and dependents. After a time the
family grew up, the sons married and needed
homes of their own. In those days no one moved
far away from the birthplace. What was more
natural than that the squire should provide homes

74 Manor and Court Rolls.

for his children close around the old manor-
house, and, dividing off the property by the
manorial boundaries, give to each a portion for
self-maintenance ? This accounts for the large,
old-fashioned farmhouses to be found in most
country parishes. The history of each farm, if
investigated, will furnish a curious proof of the
conservatism with which certain boundaries were
preserved, and the manors regarded as sections
seldom subdivided except into recognised lesser
manors.

Society was very primitive two or three hundred
years ago. It was then possible to live comfort-
ably and make a living out of the land. No
foreign grain was imported to affect the prices
of corn in country places. Competition was
unknown, and the people led a quiet, uneventful
existence, following in the footsteps of their fore-
fathers. Gradually changes have come about.
The old race of yeomen have died out ; the few
that are left make us forcibly regret that this
should be the case.

The yeoman was a man of good education and
long pedigree; he belonged to the largest section
of English society, called ' middle class.' Agricul-
ture was his profession ; he seldom left home,
consequently had few opportunities of spending
money ; the character and personal history of
every human being on the place was intimately

Manor and Court Rolls. 75

known to him, for the villagers lived and died in
their native villages. The roads were bad, there-
fore traffic from place to place was restricted to
what was absolutely necessary. Posts and
passenger coaches were rarities, and when first
started met with little patronage from the
majority of the people.

To return to the manorial courts. These were
held but once during the year. It was the annual
audit of the freemen on the estate, the 'Visus
franciplegii,' as the opening words of the court
roll states.

Quarter sessions were held four times in the
year, while the sheriff's tourn took place half
yearly. These inquired into matters of public
interest and public expense, whereas the manor
court dealt with trivial matters pertaining to the
locality. The sheriff's tourn and the manorial
court were almost identical in object ; the first
was the representative of the Crown dispensing
justice to the king's subjects; in a lesser radius
and degree, the lord of the manor had a similar
office to fulfil.

Manors were ruled by custom, and customs
varied in different places. The general aspect of
a court roll will always be found to be identical.
The older rolls are in Latin, but, like the deeds,
the later ones are written in English. The earliest
ones are literally ' rolls ' closely written on parch-

Manor and Court Rolls. J J

ment in the handwriting called by the French
' miniscule.'

Every court roll has at its commencement the
name of the manor written either above or on the
margin. The opening words read thus, ' Visus
franciplegii cum curia.' After this is the name of
the lord of the manor, the date of the day and
month, followed by the king's name and the
number of years since he ascended the throne.

Esson., on the margin, is the abbreviation for
essonium, an excuse — namely, the jurymen who
pleaded absence from the court. Following this
are the names of the twelve jurymen present, and
then the work begins.

In the older rolls the presentment of offences
are the principal items ; latterly only the tenants
and their leases employed the attention of the
court at its annual sitting.

The first thing to consider was usually the
assize — licensing, so to speak, of bread and ale.
By this means fraud and adulteration were held
in check. The right of brewing ale was a privilege
not to be infringed without penalty ; the fine
imposed was at the rate of id. for each illegal
brewing, the offenders are generally women.

Any damage to crops or fences, highways
needing repair, quarrels ending in bloodshed,
neglect by which animals were permitted to stray
and become seized by the hayward or pinder

78 Manor and Court Rolls.

All such offences are found chronicled in the
court roll. Last of all is the sum total received
in fines, signed by the names of the two officers
appointed to superintend the assize.

A court roll is always written throughout in
one handwriting, without any private marks or
signatures. From the writing, they are generally
the work of a professional scribe or clerk who
must have had a regular education — first as a
Latin scholar, secondly as an accountant, and
thirdly as a writer — mistakes or erasures are
seldom to be detected ; therefore the rolls must
have been carefully copied at leisure from rough
notes made at the time ; moreover, the spelling
of the surnames is fairly constant, which would
not be if written from dictation.

Up to the Reformation period, the court rolls
were cherished as being valuable records, pro-
viding standards for future reference ; hence we
find, until then, a fairly perfect sequence of these
yearly rolls, after which a break occurs, and only
a casual roll here and there is preserved. No
guide to court rolls would be complete unless
the oldest form of the Arabic numerals is given
and explained.

The Roman numerals are the oldest method of
writing figures in Europe, but gradually the so-
called Arabic figures (really of Indian origin) were
introduced, superseding the former style. To

Manor and Court Rolls, 79

Gerbert, otherwise known as Pope Silvester II.
(he died in 1003), is attributed their introduction
from the East to the West ; any way, from the
twelfth century, the Arabic numerals rapidly came

xiith century, xiiith century, xivth century, xvth century
1 J 1 * f

s.

9.

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$ $ $ ^
9 *> 9 f>

into use. The o was not invented before the
twelfth century. A curious resemblance is trace-
able between the figures of the alternate centuries.
Our present style of figures has grown out of the

80 Manor and Court Rolls.

older ones, but is bolder in outline and curve.
The figure 5 has passed through most variation,
while 6, 8 and 9 have scarcely altered at all.

It must be remembered that before 1752, the
old style was still used in England. The year
therefore commenced on March 25th instead, as
it does at present, of January 1st. When the
calendar was corrected in 1752, eleven days were
omitted, and September 2nd was followed by
September 14th. The people bewailed it, and
contemporary skits are numerous, echoing the
popular cry of ' Give us back our lost eleven
days.'

On the Continent the alteration had taken
place long before. In some English parish church
registers we find confusion as to the actual year
date to be used for the months between Christmas
and Lady Day. This uncertainty may be observed
before 1750. In many country places the old style
was maintained long after the year 1752.

I have a very curious old calendar of 1483 ; in
it the saints' days are veritable red-letter days.
Many of the saints named are unknown to us
either by name or legend, but in court rolls only
the principal saints' days are mentioned as those
on which the court sat.

Some months seem to have been more favoured
with saints' days than others. The following list
gives the chief English saints :

Manor and Court Rolls. 81

I.

Circumcisio Domini.

13-

St.

Veronica.

13-

St.

Hilary.

25-

Conversion of St. Paul.

February.

i.

St.

Bride, or Bridget.

2.

Purification of the Virgin,

or Candle-

mas Day.

24.

St.

Mathias the Apostle.
March.

I.

St.

David.

2.

St.

Chad.

4-

St.

Lucius, Pope and Martyr

, A.D.

253-

14.

St.

Benet, or Benedict.

18.

St.

Edward.

19.

St.

Joseph the Virgin's husband.

20.

St.

Cuthbert.

25-

Annunciation of the Virgin.

Lady- Day.

April.

23-

, St,

. George.

25-

St,

. Mark the Evangelist.
May.

I.

St.

. Philip and St. James
Apostles.

the

Less,

2.

St.

Athanasius.

6

82 Manor and Court Rolls.

3. Invention (or discovery) of the Holy
Cross.

5. St. Hilary, bishop of Aries. The two
saints of this name are confusing,
but this St. Hilary is rarely men-
tioned in English documents.
26. St. Augustine.

June.

11. St. Barnabas, Apostle.
13. St. Anthony of Padua.
22. St. Alban.

24. Nativity of St. John the Baptist. Mid-

summer Day.

29. Sts. Peter and Paul, Apostles.

30. St. Paul, Apostle.

July.

2. Visitation of the Blessed Virgin.
15. St. Swithin.
22. St. Mary Magdalen.

25. St. James the Great, Apostle.
25. St. Christopher. Lammastide.

August.

1 . St. Peter ad Vincula, or St. Peter in chains.

5. St. Oswald.

6. The Transfiguration of our Lord.
15. The Assumption of the Virgin.
21. St. Bernard.

Manor and Court Rolls. 83

24. St. Bartholomew, Apostle.

28. St. Austin or Augustine.

29. Beheading of St. John the Baptist.

September.

1. St. Egidius, or Giles.

8. The Nativity of the Blessed Virgin.
14. Exaltation of the Holy Cross.

21. St. Matthew, Apostle and Evangelist.

29. St. Michael and All Angels. Michaelmas.

October.

4. St. Francis of Assisi.

9. St. Denis, or Dionysius of Paris.

17. St. Audry, or Etheldreda.

18. St. Luke the Evangelist.

21. St. Ursula, and 11,000 virgins.

25. St. Crispin.

28. St. Simon the Canaanite, Apostle.

November.

1. All Saints' Day.

2. All Souls' Day.

11. St. Martin. Martinmas.

16. St. Edmund.

21. Presentation of the Blessed Virgin.

22. St. Cecilia.
25. St. Catherine.

30. St. Andrew, Apostle.

6—2

84 Manor and Court Rolls.

December.

6. St. Nicholas.

8. The Conception of the Blessed Virgin.

13. St. Lucy.

21. St. Thomas, Apostle.

25. The Nativity of our Blessed Lord.

Christmas.

26. St. Stephen.

27. St. John, Evangelist and Apostle.

28. The Holy Innocents.

29. St. Thomas a Beckett.

The saints' days were brought before the people
in many ways — in the village feasts, or the dedi-
cation of churches, in the mural paintings which
covered the church walls, and in the Christian
names given at baptism. In the old rolls the
date of the month is never mentioned, the prin-
cipal feast day nearest to it being used instead.

CHAPTER VII.

MONASTIC CHARTERS.

EVERY abbey of any importance kept a char-
tulary, in other words, a catalogue of its
possessions in the copies of grants of land all
collected within a single volume — a carefully com-
piled work, giving all the benefactions and privi-
leges of the foundation, entered by the scribe or
secretary of the establishment, who must have
spent many hours of his life over the work, for these
books are rarely found to be the work of more than
one or, at most, two men — one handwriting con-
tinuing on until replaced by another. Great care
and neatness was used in the formation of each
black letter — even and perfect as the most exact
printing ever done by machinery. Each charter
was emphasized with an elaborate capital letter,
and the index or headings to them were filled in
after the writing was finished, as is proved by the

86 Monastic Charters.

fact that these were sometimes never completed.
The probability is that they were the work of
another artist or illuminator, and appear to have
been sketched in with a brush or hair pencil, the
writing having been executed with a quill pen.
Colour is sometimes employed to embellish and
ornament the work, but in the oldest chartularies,
colour, usually red, is only used to mark special
passages, or, as in Domesday Book, to point out
names of persons or places. The largest work on
English monasteries was compiled by Sir William
Dugdale; but in so extensive a work as the
' Monasticon,' so much was undertaken, that it
was impossible to search deeply enough into exist-
ing records for information concerning every
religious house throughout England. Therefore,
although a valuable foundation to start with, much
more may still be ascertained from manuscripts,
public and private, particularly with regard to the
lesser religious houses or cells to foreign abbeys.

Christianity among the Anglo-Saxons was a
missionary undertaking, therefore it encouraged
the foundation of centres, but these seem to have
rather taken the form of bishoprics ; still, infor-
mation as to the early Church in England does
not exist sufficiently in detail to permit us to state
clearly the actual religious work or its method of
working.

Later on the Saxon abbeys partook rather of

Monastic Charters. 87

the nature of large training colleges, where learn-
ing was carried on.

The mission of St. Augustine extended the
monastic system, and spread Christianity to a
wider extent. It also encouraged the resort
hither of foreign monks. Great rivalry existed
between the English bishops and these foreign
missionary priests, a feud which never seems
entirely to have died out. The largest number of
English abbeys sprang up after the Norman Con-
quest. The invaders manifested their religion
by bestowing large grants of lands as votive offer-
ings and in token of gratitude, while Duke
William's honest repayment of the loans given
him for the equipment of his armada brought
over hundreds of priests and monks, to take
possession of their new territories. Church build-
ing was a religious work often undertaken for the
expiation of sins. This voluntary work was the
best of its kind. To this day the remains of
the old Norman abbeys surprise us with their
solidity of structure and elegance of design.
They must, indeed, have been beautiful when the
interiors were fitted up with corresponding
magnificence. At first the monks were poor —
they were given land, not always of the best, often
in wild and unfrequented regions ; but by frugality,
skill and industry, they soon brought it into a
fertile state, and lived on its produce and the gifts

88 Monastic Charters.

of their patrons. The Cistercians were great
wool-dealers, and we know how much English
cloth was prized at home and abroad for its
goodness of quality. In course of time the
monks, by their labours, became rich. The need
for toil being over, they sank into indolent
affluence ; instead of hard-working communities,
they became wealthy landowners. The abbots
were miniature kings, ruling over their vassals
and dependents, living in almost royal state, sur-
rounded, by their court. The history of monastic
England extends over very many centuries, even
if its commencement is only placed at the arrival
of St. Augustine in a.d. 597, or later still, with the
Norman invasion.

Changes of all kinds had taken place in those
long centuries. Large abbeys had sunk into
poverty, and others arisen in their places. The
monks had been sub-divided into orders, each
having its own peculiar rules. The oldest of
these was the Benedictine, or Black Monks, who
held most of the largest monasteries — as many as
156 in number. From this Order arose the
Cistercians, even more severe in their regulations
— popular in England, probably from having had
an Englishman as their founder, Stephen Harding,
head of the Monastery of Citeaux (Cistercium)
about the year 1125. This order had been ap-
proved by the Pope twenty-five years previously.

Monastic Charters. 89

Gasquet gives the names of 86 Cistercian houses
in England, the Cluniac as 26, and Carthusian
as g. These lesser orders had each its own
distinctive rules, but, as the above figures show,
were less popular than the older orders of monks.
The number of nunneries was also very large
(Gasquet gives 140). These were principally of
the Benedictine Order. There was only one house
of White Nuns in England, that of Grace Dieu,
in Leicestershire.

As the old Benedictine Order relaxed its severity,
the Cistercians came forward, and when these
were no longer conspicuous for piety and austerity,
there arose the wandering missionaries known as
Friars, who were also eloquent preachers, a
marked contrast to the half-educated clergy.
These friars were mendicant orders, bound by
oath neither to possess land or money, nor to
enjoy luxury. They went about preaching
throughout the country ; it was the old story of
the ' house divided against itself being unable to
stand.' The friars preached against the monks,
and the monks opposed the clergy, ending in the
downfall of the three rivals under Henry VIII.

The first order of friars was of Spanish origin,
founded by Dominic, A.D. 1219. They wore a
brown habit of coarse hair-cloth. A few years
later St. Francis of Assisi founded the Grey
Friars, called after him Franciscans. These

90 Monastic Charters.

came to England a.d. 1224, where they became
very popular. Like the monks, lesser orders
arose out of these. The Premonstratensians
gained little ground in England, but the Augus-
tinian or Austin Friars had many followers, both
men and women.

Henry VIII.'s first attack on religious houses
was made upon those whose yearly incomes did not
exceed £200. But the work thus begun did not
end here. It is said that 376 small monasteries
were doomed ; of these 123 escaped immediate
dissolution. Throughout 1535 and the succeeding
five years, the work of suppression was carried
on. During that time the monks foresaw that
ultimately they were doomed, and had time to
sell or hide their choicest possessions before the
Commissioners appeared to claim them. Then
no doubt many valuable manuscripts and papers
were destroyed, or else either hidden or removed
out of the country.

In several places some of these buried treasures
have come to light after being concealed for a
long time.

In this way a beautiful copy of the Reading
Abbey Chartulary was preserved for two hundred
years, having been concealed in a secret chamber
adjoining a chimney-stack in an old manor-house
at Shinfield, only discovered by workmen during
some repairs in the last century.

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92 Monastic Charters.

This book is a good example of its kind, being
perfect as the day when it was first hidden away.
In it are written the grants of lands from the
Abbey's second foundation by Henry I. Vast
possessions given bit by bit — generally by those
families whose ancestors lay buried in the abbey
church, for whose souls prayers were desired.
The inventories of relics are very curious, and
the vestments also are described. There is a
long list of the books in the abbey libraries of
Reading and Leominster. All the books in this
long list disappeared, no one knows where or how.
Two volumes, a missal and a book of hours, said
once to have been part of the abbey library, were
sold by auction in 1889. Nor was Reading the
only instance of the total disappearance of valuable
monastic manuscripts.

Gasquet speaks of the wanton destruction of
manuscripts at this period, and says that they
were sold for all kinds of uses.

Mr. Maskell, ' Monumenta? Ritualise Ecclesiae
Anglicanse,' reckons there must have been more
than 250,000 volumes of Church service books in
use, and that they must have been destroyed to
prevent men from following the worship of their
forefathers. A most interesting article on Ancient
Prymers, the service books of the people, appeared
in the Antiquary of March, 1892, written by Mr.
Henry Littlehales.

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94 Monastic Charters.

in the Antiquary of March, 1892, written by Mr.
Henry Littlehales.

The original deeds or grants of land to abbeys
are seldom met with among private documents.
The wording differs little from that of an ordinary
grant, except that the donor gives for the good of
his soul and the souls of his ancestors. Sometimes
very interesting details may be gathered from the
foundation deeds of chantries, with the appoint-
ment of a priest to celebrate Mass and offer up
prayers for the dead, receiving in return a salary
derived from lands or else given at once in money.

Original grants from the Crown to abbeys are
seldom dated the day or year they were written ;
except that they conclude with the names of the
bishops attesting them and the witnesses who
were present, although sometimes the king's
reign is given, or the episcopal year of the
archbishop or diocesan bishop.

The witnesses were chosen from the king's chief
officers, with a few local magnates. This will
sometimes be a valuable guide to locality when
the county is not named. But as a rule the
name of the county is written on the margin,
and also the name of the place, together with
a brief index of the contents of the charter.

The names of the English archbishops and bishops
are important as supplying the date of undated
charters. Of the latter the contracted names of the

Monastic Charters. 95

sees are all given in Wright's 'Court-hand Restored,'
but neither there nor in any other book is mention
made of the Norman bishops,* who frequently
appear as witnesses to monastic charters.

Bishoprics of Normandy, etc.

NAME OF SEE. MODERN NAME.

Archbishopric : Rothomagensis. Rouen.
Bishopric : Baiocensis. Bayeux.

Abrincatensis. Avranches.

Lexoviensis. Lisieux.

Ebroicensis. Evreux.

Cadomensis. Caen.

Sylvanectensis. Senliz.

Bellovacensis. Beauvais.

Atrebatensis. Arras.

Constantiensis. Coutances.

Sagiensis. S€ez.

Ambianensis or

Samarobrivensis. Amiens.
As likely to be a help towards affixing the date
of undated charters I append a list of the arch-
bishops and chancellors of England from the
Conquest ; also a few of the bishops of the same
period.

Archbishops of Canterbury.
Stigand ... ... ••• 1052-1070

Lanfranc ... ... 1070-1089

Anselm ... ... ... 1093-1109

* A list of French Bishops will be found in ' Gallia Christiana,'
or in ' Neustria Pia.'

96 Monastic Charters.

Ralph of Escures ••• 1114-1122

William of Corbeil ••• 1123-1135

Theobald ... ••• 1139- 1161

Thomas a Beckett ••• 1162-1170

Richard 1 174- 1 184

Baldwin ... ••■ 1185-1190

Reginald Fitz Joscelin ... 119 1

Hubert Walter ... 1193-1205

Stephen Langton ... 1205-1216-28

Richard de Grand . . . 1229-1231

Edmund Rich ... ... 1234-1240

Boniface of Savoy ... 1245-1270

Robert Kilwardby ••• 1273-1278

John Peckham ... ... 1279-1292

Robert Winchelsey ... 1294-1313

Next to Canterbury the second great southern
bishopric was Salisbury. The latter was a very
large and powerful diocese, commencing first at
Dorchester a.d. 634, dividing into two sees, Win-
chester and Sherborne, a.d. 705, which were
further subdivided, the latter into Sherborne,
Wells and Crediton, and the Winchester see into
Selsey and Ramsbury (Corvinensis) ; all reuniting
in 1075 into the powerful bishopric of Old Sarum,
eventually removed to Salisbury, 1218. Thus it
will be seen that Winchester and Sherborne were
the chief bishoprics, the others being offshoots of
later creation.

Monastic Charters. 97

The Bishops of Salisbury commenced under
Herman (died 1077), previously known as Bishop
of Sherborne (Scirburniensis).

Osmund, died Dec. 3, 1099.

Roger, elected 1102, consecrated 1107, died

"39-
Jocelin de Bailul, died a Cistercian Monk at

Waverley Abbey, 1184.

Hubert Walter, 1189, translated to Canterbury,

"93-

Herbert Poore, 1194.

Richard Poore, 1217. The see then transferred
to New Sarum or Salisbury.

Robert Bingham, 1228.

William of York, 1246.

Giles de Bridport, 1256.

Walter de La Wyle, 1263.

Robert de Wykehampton, 1271.

Walter Scammel, 1284.

Henry de Braundeston, 1287.

William de La Corner, 1289.

Nicolas Longesp6e, 1293.

Simon of Ghent, 1297.

Roger de]Mortival, 1315.

Chief Justices of England.

Odo of Bayeux and William Fitz

Osbern, Earl of Hereford . . . 1067

7

98 Monastic Charters.

William de Warren and Richard Fitz

Gilbert ... ... ... 1073

Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury,
Geoffrey, Bishop of Coutances, and
Robert, Count of Mortain ... 1078

Odo, Bishop of Bayeux ... ... 1087-1088

William de St. Carilepho, Bishop of

Durham ... ... ... 1088

Ralph Flambard, Bishop of Durham 1094-1100
Robert Bloett, Bishop of Lincoln ... 1100-1107
Roger Le Poor, Bishop of Salis-
bury ... ... ... ... 1107-1139

Robert de Beaumont, Earl of Leicester 1154-1167
Richard de Luci ... ... ... 1154-1179

Ranulph Glanville ... ... 1180-1189

Hugh, Bishop of Durham, and

William, Earl of Essex ... ... 1189

Hugh, Bishop of Durham, and William

Longchamp, Bishop of Ely ... 1190

William Longchamp alone ... 1190

Walter of Coutances, Archbishop of

Rouen ... ... ... 1191-1193

HuJ^rt Walter, Archbishop of Canter-
bury ... ... ... ... 1193-1198

Geoffrey Fitz Peter, Earl of Essex ... 1198-1213
Peter des Roches, Bishop of Win-
chester ... ... ... 1214-1215

Hubert de Burgh... ... ... 1215-1232

Stephan Segrave ... ... ... 1232-1234

Monastic Charters.

99

Hugh Bigot

...

1258-1260

Hugh Le Despenser

...

1260

Philip Basset

...

1261

Ralph de Hengham

...

1273-1289

Gilbert de Thornton

1289-1295

Roger Brabazon ...

1295

Chancellors of England.

Herfast, afterwards B

ishop of Elmham

1068

Osbern, afterwards Bishop of Exeter

1070-1074

Osmond, afterwards

Bishop of Salis-

bury ...

1074-1078

Maurice, afterwards E

Sishop of London

1078-1083

William de Beaufoe, afterwards Bishop

of Thetford

1083-1085

William Giffard ...

1086-1090

Robert Bloett

1090

Walderic

1093

William Giffard ...

1094-1101

Roger Le Poor ...

1101-1103

William Giffard ...

1103-1104

Walderic

1104

Ranulph

1108-1123

Geoffrey Rufus

...

1124-1135

Roger Le Poor . . .

1135-1139

Philip ...

...

"39

Thomas a Beckett

1154-1162

Ralph de Warneville

/

1173-1181

7 — 2

ioo Monastic Charters.

Geoffrey

1181-1189

William Longchamp, Bishop of Ely

1189-1197

Eustace, Bishop of Ely

1198-1199

Hubert Walter ...

1199-1205

Walter Grey

1205-1213

Peter des Roches

1213-1214

Walter Grey

1214

Richard de Marisco

1214-1226

Ralph Neville

1226-1244

Walter de Merton

1261

Nicolas de Ely ...

1263

Thomas Cantelupe

1265

Walter Giffard ...

1265

Godfrey Giffard ...

1267

Richard Middleton

1269-1272

Walter de Merton

1272

Robert Burnell ...

1273-1292

John Langton

1292

William Greenfield

1302

William of Hamilton

1304

Ralph Baldock ...

1307

CHAPTER VIII.

PARISH REGISTERS.

THE study of parish registers is quite apart
from that of old deeds. The writing of the
former begins at the period where the latter usually
end, for deeds written in the seventeenth century
are regarded by the antiquary as modern ; but then
comes the most difficult handwriting of all to
decipher, because the old race of scholarly clerks
had died out and been replaced by less educated
men.

Parish registers are unique in many ways. They
contain information nowhere else obtainable.
Sometimes, besides the mere repetition of names,
there are inserted scraps of original information,
for the clergyman had undisputed possession of the
volumes, which remained usually in the keeping
of his deputy, the parish clerk, and either of them
could enter in the books whatever he pleased.

Every now and then an outcry arises as to the

102 Parish Registers.

condition and care of parish registers, and desire is
expressed that they should be deposited in a large
public office similar to the Public Record Office ; but
anyone who has wished to make or obtain extracts
from the registers at the diocesan registries is
well aware of the trouble and expense involved ;
search fees soon mount up, nor can careful pre-
servation be ensured by any such an arrange-
ment. Many are the known instances where the
precious volumes have been purposely mutilated,
or by neglect suffered to fall into decay and illegi-
bility ; but, as a whole, it is wonderful to see the
excellent condition and preservation of these old
records, which, if once removed out of their own
parishes into a large public collection, would lose
all individuality, and become merged in the mass
of manuscripts which are more or less buried in
every large library.

It is a pity that some arrangement cannot be
made to ensure preservation by a few copies
being printed of each register ; the work is
gradually being undertaken privately, but ought
to be worked on a more systematic plan with
uniformity throughout England.

An order such as this would not in any way
affect the fees accruing to the clergy from re-
searches, but rather tend to increase them, for at
present much information is lost because its where-
abouts is unknown. It is this question of search-

Parish Registers. 103

fees which causes such a steady resistance on the
part of the resident clergy to any such project.
But in spite of this, the work has been begun
already; the registers of many parishes are
printed, or have MS. transcripts all ready for the
press, nor is the expense as great as might be
imagined ; a few copies unbound may be produced
at a cost of from £3 to £10, in proportion to the
amount of matter to be printed.

It is not unusual, when applying by letter for
extracts from an old register, to receive a reply of
apology from the clergyman recommending a
personal search on the part of the inquirer, as
the information could not be sent owing to
inability to read the unfamiliar old handwriting.
This would be avoided if a printed copy properly
indexed were at hand for reference, while on any
important matter, where an attested copy from
the original was necessary, it could be obtained
as heretofore.

The history of parish registers commences
from the Reformation year of 1536. What
previous system had existed we are unable to say,
for information on the subject is lacking. Here
and there fragments of registers are known earlier
than the above quoted date, but these are the
exception, not the rule. Deaths noted down by
the chantry priests or monks, are found on
the margins of old monastic breviaries, where

104 Parish Registers.

prayers for the souls of the departed had been
desired.

The subject is one of vast importance, for
without proper registration, it is impossible to
decide the legality of a marriage, or prove legiti-
macy of offspring, both necessary points of law
where inheritance of landed property is con-
cerned.

The scheme of parochial registration, as devised
by Henry VIII. 's shrewd minister Cromwell, was
only copied from a like plan long in use abroad.

The idea at first, being new to the English
people, met with much opposition, being mistaken
for a new species of taxation ; but, nevertheless,
it was ordered to be carried out under penalty of
fines, and, being found a valuable institution, was
submitted to, until custom fully established it.
Thus the old parish registers cannot be older
than 1536, except in very exceptional cases. But
the order did not become general till two years
later, therefore 1538 may be reckoned as the year
when they may be said to have in reality begun.

At first the books were carefully written, the
entries being in Latin. After awhile less care
was taken. The notes were made on rough strips
of paper called ' clerk's notes,' and were supposed
to be entered at fixed intervals in the book ; but
often this was irregularly performed, and the
strips were mislaid and lost before they could be

Parish Registers. 105

copied. In some parishes, both the clerk's notes
as well as the old register book may still be seen
and compared. The religious uncertainty of the
succeeding reigns caused the question of registra-
tion to be ignored, but Queen Elizabeth issued
several commands on the subject, notably that by
which transcripts were yearly sent at Easter to
be preserved among the diocesan records.

Most of the old parish register books now
existing are transcripts made according to this
command, as can be seen at a glance, for the
handwriting is uniform throughout, which could
not have been the case if the notes made by the
clerk had been periodically copied into the book.
Another more stringent Act, to ensure yearly
copies being made, was passed upon James I.'s
accession to the throne, and the clergyman's
name was to be affixed to each page as witness
that the copy was faithfully exact. Had these
wise regulations been carried out to the letter
and in the spirit that was intended, we should
now possess an invaluable corroboration of the
accuracy of the parish registers ; but alas, the
transcripts to be found in the diocesan registries
are meagre and imperfect. Years and series of
years are missing, and the entries are so lacking
in detail as to be practically useless.

Personal search can of course be made among
the diocesan registers, and this is strongly to be

106 Parish Registers.

recommended, for any mistakes in a transcript
render it not only valueless, but mischievous, for
extracts from registers are the most dangerous
material a genealogist has to deal with. For
unless further authenticated by wills and old deeds
to confirm the relationship, it will be found no
easy job to piece together these broken links in
the chain of evidence, and without wilful misre-
presentation being intended, mistakes may and
will occur.

Take, for instance, any name, and try to trace
out the pedigree with the help of the parish
register only. At first it is easy enough, whether
worked backwards or forwards, but after the
first three or four generations have been worked
out, all certainty of relationship is lost, and be-
comes confused.

The handwriting of the parish registers is a com-
bination of the old set law-hand and the personal
handwritings mentioned in the second chapter.
Original entries (i.e., entries made at the time of
performing the religious ceremony) are seldom
met with before the middle of James I.'s reign, by
which time the Latin language had fallen into
disuse.

The Commonwealth Government passed an
Act of Parliament appointing paid registrars to
every village (1653). These were illiterate men,
whose only accomplishments consisted of being

Parish Registers. 107

able to read and write, and whose zeal and dis-
cretion alone regulated the keeping of the register
books. This duty was often but ill-performed,
especially when age and infirmity overtook the
registrar, who continued in office until death
relieved him of his duties. No second registrar
seemed in any case to have been appointed, and
the work of keeping the registers devolved again
upon the clergyman and his assistant clerk.

For several years after the Restoration of 1660,
the registers were irregularly kept, and very
erratic. The old race of educated clerks was gone.
Formerly, when the registers first began, clerk-
ships may have been filled by men educated in the
monasteries, who, when turned adrift, were glad
to employ themselves as priests' chaplains or
private tutors as a means of livelihood.

Until this century no small schools of any kind
existed for the poorer classes, except those pro-
vided by charitable bequests. These were few and
far between, and could be of little benefit to the
masses of the people. No wonder, then, that
the ill-paid clergy were obliged to be content with
very uneducated men to serve in the capacity of
clerk. The registers of the latter part of the
seventeenth century are indited in every variety,
of illegibly bad writing.

The chief difficulty of reading the old registers
lies in the immense variety of forms a name was

108 Parish Registers.

capable of passing through, owing to the laxity of
English spelling and pronunciation. The people
knew their own surnames only by oral tradition,
and were entirely dependent upon the parish
clerk, who wrote down the name as it sounded to
him, and as sounds have a different effect on
different persons, the commonest names often
appeared in very strange and unrecognisable dis-
guises before they finally crystallized into their
modern forms.

It is not unusual to find items of miscellaneous
information jotted down at random by the clergy-
man among the entries of births, marriages, and
deaths. Heavy falls of snow, disastrous floods,
periods of drought, storms of any kind, were all
events of great local importance in country places,
and would remain for a long time as traditional
landmarks in their annals. Alas, such items are
rare, and are now rendered impossible in the
printed pages of the modern register books.

The most useful and least troublesome way to
catalogue the contents of a parish register for
reference, is to write out the year, and below it
enter the births, marriages, and deaths, with the
names occurring under each heading, but without
taking the time or trouble to copy the dates of
day or month, these last being only required for
law investigations, and for which purpose the
originals only would be received as evidence.

Parish Registers. 109

Parliamentary blue-books have been issued on
the subject of parochial registers, and a most
useful handbook is now in course of preparation,
giving as complete a catalogue as possible of all
registers of which printed copies or indexes have
been made up to the present day.

CHAPTER IX.

PARISH OFFICERS AND THEIR BOOKS.

AMONG the contents of the parish deed-chest
wherein registers are supposed to be safely
kept, are often found other books and papers,
seemingly of little interest or importance, but in
reality very likely to yield curious and original
scraps of information, with glimpses into the life
of the poorer classes during the past centuries.
Some day these old account-books, now flung
aside as worthless, will be of great importance in
an antiquary's eyes, for they give lists of all the
residents in the parish, from the squire to the
lowest and poorest, showing the social status of
each ; and further, are of value when compared
with the parish registers, as giving a clue to the
length of residence of inhabitants who, if of the
middle class, sooner or later served their turn as
parish officers ; and if paupers, were entered as
recipients of parochial charity.

Parish Officers and their Books, in

Previous to this century, the churchwardens,
overseers, road surveyors and parish constables
held office for one year only, being elected at the
annual Easter vestry ; now re-election is supposed
to take place, but the post is carried on from year
to year without opposition.

Apparently some rule of yearly income or rental
governed the election, or else certain tenements
were represented in rotation by their tenants, for
widows were liable to serve, in which case a son
or some near neighbour was deputed to act in the
woman's name.

Now the custom of yearly change has died out,
and a churchwarden once elected goes on from
year to year, until sickness, old age, or death
renders some fresh arrangement absolutely neces-
sary. Surely, if in those old days, when education
was so sparsely distributed, and even reading and
writing looked upon as sciences — if then it was
possible to find men able and capable of directing
local affairs, it seems strange that now so few are
considered fit for the post, when every day-
labourer's son is taught drawing and essay-writing
in addition to his elementary studies.

The office of churchwarden is very old. Now
it has lost most of its prestige, and the church-
warden is almost forgotten except on the Sundays
when collections are made; but formerly each
villager took a personal interest in affairs which

1 1 2 Parish Officers and their Books.

some day he himself would probably be called
upon to manage.

The two churchwardens of a parish represented
the rival interests of its inhabitants ; the parson
versus the squire and his tenants. Each officer
had his clients' interests to uphold and consider.
The most onerous duty, however, fell upon the
overseer of the poor, in whose hands rested the
responsibility of the proper distribution of the
public funds in the shape of bequests and legacies ;
to him came applications for relief, and with him
also were mooted all questions relating to the
disposal of paupers, both dead and alive.
Edward III. forbade the giving of alms to able-
bodied men, but no regular poor laws were
invented till Henry VIII. was king.

The first Acts of Parliament relating to poor
laws were passed towards the conclusion of Queen
Elizabeth's long reign. It was absolutely neces-
sary to make some fresh statutes applicable to the
new state of affairs consequent upon the Reforma-
tion. Previously all charity had been distributed
or directed by the monks, and after they were
dispersed and their lands seized by the Crown
and sold, their unfortunate dependents were
rendered still more dependent, and all the severe
laws against vagrancy and beggars made by the
Tudor sovereigns could not abate the nuisance
or solve the difficult question, while doles and gifts

Parish Officers and their Books, i t 3

of bread or alms served only to increase the evil
through toleration.

Worse and worse the state of things became,
till towards the end of the last century the climax
was reached ; there were then whole families of
paupers who, generation after generation, made
no effort towards self-support either for them-
selves or their offspring. These last were brought
up entirely on charity, clothed, fed and appren-
ticed, till finally married by charity, the fees being
paid out of the charity money ; nor did the matter
end there, for, probably, after the lapse of years
the wedded couple with their children (if thev
became chargeable to the parish) were returnei
to their native village, again to become recipients
of its charity till death claimed them, and the
parish paid the funeral expenses.

The first commission upon the poor laws took
place in William IV.'s reign, and since then
reform has gradually been at work. In many
places public charity is still abused ; but no real
good can be effected at once, and every effort
must be proved by long and fair trial, under
which all unsuitable experiments will fail, and
only the practical and beneficial ones will survive
the test. Of course, all relief and outdoor assist-
ance was left very much to the discretion and
honesty of the overseer, whose accounts were
yearly scrutinized at the Easter vestry, when most

ii4 Parish Officers and their Books.

parochial accounts were discussed. Sometimes
these discussions were considered of sufficient
importance to be entered in the parish books.
Questions as to the ownership and distribution
of pews in the church, repairs to the edifice, by
whom they were to be done, boundaries, and
whose business it was to keep in order certain
roads lying between rival parishes — all such
matters came forward for consideration, and,
finally, the officers for the ensuing year were
elected, and the books handed over to the new
churchwardens.

Perhaps a further check upon miscellaneous
entries being made in the books was that all
the accounts had ' to be passed ' at the nearest
Sessions and signed by the presiding magistrate,
who was some neighbouring squire.

The parish constable is now replaced by the
policeman supplied by the county, the visible
representative of the law in rural places.

One entry often found among the old accounts
was of repairs done to the village stocks, fre-
quently used to punish petty offences, especially
drunkenness. The pound, too, often needed
mending ; fines for allowing animals to stray and
become empounded are among the most frequent
entries in old manor court rolls. In many places
a hay ward was a regularly appointed officer for
this purpose, whose duty it was to capture the

Parish Officers and their Books. 115

animals and attend to them until they were
reclaimed by their owner or sold to defray
expenses. In Berkshire the hayward, or pinder,
gave a tally to the person who brought the beast
found on his land, and he did not deliver the
beast until its owner produced the tally, proving
that compensation for damage had been properly
paid.

The offices of overseer of the poor and of
road surveyor, formerly called waywarden, are
not of any great antiquity ; nor are they of great
consequence so far as regards the old account
books, in which their elections are often not even
mentioned. As to the constable, we only get
casual glimpse of his duties when we read a list
of his expenses incurred in conveying some delin-
quent parishioner to the county gaol, or of
journeys taken to distant places to inquire into
the antecedents of paupers or in taking them back
to their own villages.

It is the overseers' accounts which are really
curious, those long lists of garments bought to
clothe the paupers and their children, the old
apprentice forms by which the children were
placed out in service so soon as they were capable
of earning a stray sixpence towards their own
keep ; cruel as it seemed to be to send out such
young children to work, it was, in reality, the
kindest thing that could be done for them, for it

8—2

i [ 6 Parish Officers and their Books.

gave them a chance of becoming independent and
working for themselves.

Maybe a bundle of old papers are rolled to-
gether among the account books. These may be
the orders for the removal of paupers back to the
village they called ' home,' a custom first originated
by some Acts of Parliament passed by Charles II.
At the same time the parish officers were com-
manded and forced by penalties to provide for
paupers removed back into their parish, and, to
prevent fraud, written proofs as to the proper
home or residence of the paupers had to be
obtained and produced ; these papers are called
' settlements.'

The officers did their best for the welfare of
their charges : they provided the old women with
spinning-wheels, so that they could earn a trifle
for themselves, while the men were set to work
on the road ; when failing in health they were
tended by a parish nurse, and if sick the doctor
saw them. Sometimes they were sent to Bath or
Cheltenham to be cured by the far-famed waters.
For many years these old annuitants lingered on,
till we read the last entry paid for burying Goody
or Goodman So-and-so.

Any public event which required to be cele-
brated by the ringing of the church bells is sure
to be mentioned among the ordinary expenses.

There are in the old books (those of that un-

Parish Officers and their Books, wj

settled time when the religion of the State varied
according to the sovereign in power, during the
Tudor and Stuart dynasties) many notices of
the alterations wrought both in town and country
places. The church goods were first catalogued
by order of Edward VI. 's ministers ; rich vest-
ments, altar hangings, and numerous vessels are
named in the first list, but later on, under Queen
Elizabeth, the parish churches were further
despoiled, till there was little left for the Puritans
to remove, and in the later lists only the old
service books and books of religious instruction
are left to the churchwardens to chronicle.
Although instances as early as 1287 are on
record, the erection of pews was an innovation
only introduced by degrees after the Reformation.
The destruction of screens and the removal of
altars caused altar rails and communion tables to
be used instead. Then came the terrors of civil
war. Upon the churchwardens devolved the duty
of providing burial for soldiers slain in battle.
Such burials were not often in the churchyard,
but on the boundaries of parishes, the expenses
being defrayed equally ; this was probably an old
custom in warfare, but it was carried out as late
as the Commonwealth. A battle was a public
calamity, and the responsibility of providing
interment for the slain was therefore a public
duty.

1 1 8 Parish Officers and their Books.

After the Restoration the churches were re-
paired and the royal arms restored. Later on
we find some parsons resigning their work from
nonconforming scruples ; at this time, too, are
notices of excommunicated persons. The Puritan
zeal was aroused by James II. 's injudicious at-
tempt to restore Catholicism ; and attendance at
church, first commanded by Queen Elizabeth,
was further enforced by an order that taking of
the Sacrament should be regarded as a test of
conformity ; for disobedience the punishment of
excommunication was inflicted upon the church-
wardens' application to the bishop. The Recus-
ants, as papists were called, were treated with
great severity and injustice.

Any fresh Act of Parliament with reference to
fees or taxes was soon noted in the parish books.
Fees varied in different places, according to
custom. Prior to the eighteenth century fees
for burial within the church were payable to
the churchwardens, but afterwards became the
parson's perquisite. These entries may lead to
the identification of vaults and interments other-
wise forgotten. The burial of strangers was
always charged for at a higher rate ; for paupers
the parish paid the expenses, and the tax of 3d.
on each burial was not enforced. Taxes were
levied on many things under the Georges, but
none were more obnoxious to the people than the

Parish Officers and their Books. 1 1 9

birth, marriage, and death taxes, of which the
clergyman was made to act as a most unwilling
tax-gatherer.

The window-tax fell heavily on old manor houses
pierced with innumerable windows and skylights.
It was then that many windows were blocked up
to avoid payment.

In the last century are many entries of pay-
ment for the release of men seized for service in
the army or navy; for when the father of a family
went away, his wife and children were left to be
provided for by charity, and the first payment by
the churchwardens for his release was in the end
the cheapest.

A list of rails (spelt usually 'rayles') surrounding
the churchyard reminds one of another almost
obsolete custom, that of each person repairing
the rail in the fence next to his property or for
which he was liable. The liability was attached
to the land, though custom decided whether the
owner or the occupier was the person to do such
repairs.

Last, not least, in the parish chest were bundles
of old papers, technically known as 'briefs.'
In the account - books all Church collections
were duly entered. Originally these were more
of the nature of voluntary rates, for the name of
each donor is given and the sum he gave, varying
in accordance with his social position and means.

120 Parish Officers and their Books.

The origin of church collections is obscure ; no
doubt the offerings given at the sacrament were
always devoted to the relief of poverty and distress.

To regulate and restrict the right of levying
collections, Acts of Parliament were passed, and
no collection was allowed to be made without a
proper license called a ' brief ' ; but the issuing of
these grew to an alarming extent. Briefs were
issued for all sorts of emergencies and disasters,
principally for damage by fire, there being then
no insurance offices ; and the old buildings, once
set alight, were seldom rescued from total de-
molition. A complete list of early briefs would
be curious, but would be so extensive as to fill
a large volume.

The churchwardens probably kept few if any
accounts prior to the sixteenth century, therefore
any older church collections are unrecorded or
only mentioned by chance.

In an old parish book of Sulhamstead are
entries of the following collections :

1670. Collected towards the redemption of
English captives in Turkey ; and again, in 1680,
a similar collection took place.

It puzzled me much why such a small Berkshire
parish should subscribe so liberally for the release
of slaves ; but this was explained on discovering
that Turkish pirates infested the seas, and even
landed with impunity on the western coasts, and

Parish Officers and their Books. 121

carried off prisoners, both men and women, to
become slaves. The main road to the West ran
through Berkshire ; travellers along it doubtless
brought tales of such wild deeds, which lost
nothing in the telling, and excited the sympathy
of the countryfolk.

In 1699 money was again collected ; this time
to redeem 300 captives detained by the King of
Morocco.

In 1678 funds were collected towards the re-
building of St. Paul's Cathedral, destroyed twelve
years previously in the great fire of London.
Many papists, all over England, added their con-
tributions to this collection.

1699. Collection was made for the French
refugees and Vaudois settled in Switzerland,
who had fled at the revocation of the Edict of
Nantes. To inhabitants of Sulhamstead village
this may have had a keener interest, in that
Samuel Morland, afterwards made a baronet, the
son of a former rector, Rev. Thomas Morland,
was sent out by Government in 1655 to inquire
into the condition of the Waldenses, and he wrote
thereon a book descriptive of the country and its
inhabitants. Martin Morland, another son of the
rector, had returned to his old home for awhile,
when, at the Restoration, he resigned his living
in 1665, for here two of his sons were born.

1687. Brief for loss by fire in Aylesford.

122 Parish Officers and their Books.

1689. Loss by fire at Bishops Lavington, Wilts.

1690. Ditto, East Smithfield.
Town of Stafford.

Town of Bungay, Suffolk.

1690. In the parish of St. George's, in the
borough of Southwark.
In the Town of St. Ives, Huntingdon-
shire.

Five collections for fires in different counties,
made in one small parish within a year.

In 1703, brief for refugees in the Principality
of Orange.

After 1703 the givers' names are no longer
entered.

The parish doctor was regularly engaged by
the churchwardens. In 1774 the agreement for
Sulhamstead was made and signed by the doctor,
and witnessed that he ' should do the business of
surgery and apothecary, broken bones excepted,
for the yearly sum of five guineas ' ! No wonder
that these hard-worked physicians lacked skill, and
relied more upon practice than education for
what talent they did possess.

The perambulation of parish bounds was
another vestry question, upon which rested dis-
puted tithes. In entries of tithe, old field-names,
now forgotten, may often be recovered. The
commutation of tithe also was discussed, and
in some places the parson made agreements with

Parish Officers and their Books. 123

his parishioners on the subject. Visitation fees
came before the vestry, and sending copies of the
register to the Diocesan Registry was, or ought
to have been, an annual occurrence. Any dis-
pute seems to have come within the vestry's
jurisdiction, and all dry subjects were washed
down with plenty of ale, an item regularly entered
among the expenses.

Perhaps it was at the vestry that the village
urchins came up to claim rewards offered for the
extermination of vermin, their instinctive love of
sport being further developed by their love of
gain. Foxes are among the animals named on
the list, together with stoats, sparrows, etc., and
the prices paid for this wholesale destruction
seem very high.

The spelling of many of the old account books
is decidedly phonetic and original, but as a whole
they are legible and neatly kept. They need
nothing to explain their meanings, except a guide
such as I have endeavoured to give, as to what
class of information their pages will yield, for the
books of one parish closely resemble all others.

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CHAPTER X.

BOOKS ON PALEOGRAPHY AND KINDRED SUBJECTS.

PART of a guide-book's business is to direct
people's attention to other similar works
likely to be of use to them.

Few accomplishments can be learnt with the
aid of only one book on the subject, and paleo-
graphy is a combination of many elements. Few
English writers have expended their genius in
books on handwriting ; it has not in this country
been looked upon as one of the sciences. Abroad
the subject has been more studied, especially by
the French, in whose language many valuable
books on it have been compiled. The type re-
quired for the abbreviations is expensive; small
editions only were issued, and many valuable
works are in consequence rare and little known,
being only met with in public libraries or among
collections of old books. Thus seventeen volumes
of ' La Bibliotheque de l'Ecole des Chartres,'

Books on Paleography, elc. 125

published in Paris between the years 1839 an d
1886, will fetch as much as £30; 'Album de la
Paleographie ' (Quantin, 1887), £6; 'Elements de
la Paleographie,' par Natalis de Wailly, two
volumes, 1838, £3 3s. ; ' Musee des Archives
Nationales,' 1872, £1 10s.

A very useful book, less expensive than the
above, was written by Prou, published in Paris by
Alphonse Picard, editeur, 82, Rue Bonaparte ;
and cheaper still than this is the ' Paleographie
des Chartes et des Manuscrits du XL au XVII.
Siecles,' par Alphonse Chassant, published by
Auguste Aubry, Rue Dauphine 16, Paris. The
best known cheap book on the subject, however,
is a small paper-bound volume, ' Dictionnaire des
Abbreviations Latines et Francaises,' par Alphonse
Chassant, published by Jules Martin, 19, Boule-
vard Haussmann, Paris, at the low price of 2
francs 50 centimes ; it has already reached a
fifth edition.

There are also books on paleography written in
German, Spanish and Italian, but these are seldom
met with in England.

Now let us see what our own countrymen have
done towards elucidating our national manuscripts.
The list will not be a long one.

It must be borne in mind that first of all four
separate languages are required, namely, Anglo-
Saxon, Norman-French, Latin and Old English.

126 Books on Paleography and

For the first of these, the standard work is Bos-
worth's Anglo-Saxon Dictionary; a second-hand
copy may be bought for 8s. 6d. It contains the
alphabet and grammatical peculiarities of the
Anglo-Saxon language, besides the dictionary of
words.

For Norman-French, all that is required at
first start is a familiarity with the modern
language. Any good, old-fashioned dictionary
will be of assistance, and later on Roquefort's
dictionary, Lacombe's Burguy, and the glossary
in the Supplement to Ducange, may be resorted
to, to solve difficulties.

Latin and English may be studied together, the
one being translated verbatim from the other.

The standard English work upon handwriting
as a whole is called ' The Origin and Progress of
Handwriting,' by Astle; it was published in the
beginning of this century. A good copy is now
worth two or three sovereigns. This book deals
with every kind of known writing from its earliest
existence. There are facsimiles of Hebrew, Sans-
crit, Greek, Latin, and other languages, besides
specimens of English charters of each century.

The Paleographic Society was started in 1873,
and their yearly volumes contain exact repre-
sentations of the old documents, but these cost
£1 is. each. They are valuable as having the
facsimile and its transcript side by side, but as

Kindred Subjects. 127

yet they have only selected very old charters, not
considering mediaeval English deeds worthy of con-
sideration. Bosworth's Anglo-Saxon dictionary
is the standard work on this subject.

Some Anglo-Saxon manuscripts were published
in 1878 by command of the Queen, upon the
recommendation of the Master of the Rolls, the
work being undertaken by General Cameron,
director of the Ordnance Survey, with trans-
lations added by W. Basevi- Saunders. The
charters selected were those among the archives
of Canterbury Cathedral, as they give three
centuries of Anglo-Saxon history, a.d. 742 to
A.D. 1049. This work now fetches £2 2s.

A collection of early Anglo - Saxon charters,
those of Abingdon Abbey, has been issued in the
' Rolls Series ' in two volumes.* Other Anglo-
Saxon documents have been printed and trans-
lated at various times.

Domesday Survey has been reproduced by a
photographic process, and is extremely clear and
well executed ; it is also published in four volumes
in a more readable type, but still abbreviated.
Each county can be obtained in a separate
volume. The translations are not given ; this for
the student is rather an advantage than otherwise.

No subject has been more studied than
Domesday Book. Translations, explanations

* This also contains a good glossary of Anglo-Saxon words.

128 Books on Paleography and

and dictionaries have been written upon it.
These are very valuable as explaining the obscure
points and giving the modern acreage, as com-
pared with the carucate, bovate and hide. To
understand a county history these must be closely
compared. Many of the manors named in the
old Survey are now lost. It must be remembered
that waste lands and commons were not always
mentioned, nor were churches or any property
which was not taxable. For this reason Domes-
day often disappoints us by its meagreness of
detail, but it forms the beginning or basis from
which an inquiry may be started, and to pursue
it through the centuries which followed, the
public rolls and manuscripts are the only means
of information ; of these Domesday will prove
valuable as a key. The really practical book on
writing best known and most popular, because
neither complicated nor expensive, is Wright's
' Court-hand Restored,' price £i, compiled in
1846 to meet a long-felt want, for Latin having
ceased as the law language, lawyers no longer
were obliged to know old legal forms and words
as part of their profession, although they often
felt the need of understanding them where
any search through old deeds was requisite.
Since then, this book has passed through nine
editions, the last of which was brought out in
1879, edited and improved by Mr. C. T. Martin,

Kindred Subjects. 129

of the Public Record Office. It contains alphabets
in all styles, facsimiles of all classes of English
writing, with translations, a glossary of obsolete
words and place-names, supplying a valuable text-
book to paleography, giving the reader all the
information necessary for studying old deeds.
Since then (1892) Mr. Martin has compiled a
fuller and more elaborate glossary, called ' The
Record Interpreter,' 10s. 6d. The amateur will
need no other books if he is provided with these
two volumes. A list of abbreviations taken from
the Pipe Rolls was issued among the yearly
volumes of the Pipe Rolls Society, price 12s. 6d.
The fourth volume of 'The Registrum Palatinum
Dunelmense,' edited by the late Sir Thomas
Duffus Hardy, in the Rolls series of ' Chronicles
and Memorials,' also contains a list of contracted
words and their explanations. Its price is 10s. 6d.

The study of old deeds brings in its train a
multiplicity of other subjects bearing upon old
customs and legal formulas, some of which were
complicated. All the writers upon the law explain
these formalities ; ' though now antiquated so far
as the actual law work and procedure is con-
cerned,' they give the ancient methods ; of these
' Blackstone's Commentaries ' is the best known.

Jacobs' ' Law Dictionary ' is another similar
book; also 'A New Law Dictionary,' by J.
Nicholson. But these books are now out of date ;

9

130 Books on Paleography and

they may by chance be met with at sales or
on bookstalls, where they may be bought for a
few shillings. Perhaps an advertisement in the
Exchange and Mart might be successful in obtain-
ing replies. Of guides to various branches of
archaeology there are plenty lately issued since
the subject became fashionable.

' Record Searching,' by W. Rye, gives a
glimpse into the various public collections, and
the class of information likely to be derived from
manuscripts.

' How to write the History of a Family,' by
Phillimore, is a similar work, useful to genealo-
gists.

' How to write the History of a Parish,' by J.
C. Cox, LL.D.

The information contained in all these three last
books might be with advantage remodelled and
extended.

Upon Parish Registers a charming little book,
full of information, has been written by Mr.
Chester Waters, price 3s. gd. Every clergyman
should possess a copy of it. On Church History
there are recently published two very good is.
volumes, called ' Illustrated Notes on English
Church History,' by Rev. Arthur Lane; small
engravings of all the English cathedrals and many
handsome and celebrated churches are given, but
no descriptions of them. A very good series of

Kindred Subjects. 131

Diocesan Histories has been brought out by
the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.
These may now be bought second-hand at is. per
volume.

For derivation of words, there is no better guide
than Taylor's ' Words and Places,' and Edmunds'
'Place-names'; both these are trustworthy, and
have become recognised authorities.

Quality rather than quantity should be the
antiquary's motto in his choice of a library, but
antiquarianism and archaeology require many
books of reference, and it is well to know those
books most likely to be of permanent use instead
of wasting room upon volumes not required after
the first reading. Upon Manor Rolls there is a
very clever work lately issued by the Selden
Society (volume ii.). It gives much new informa-
tion on Manorial Customs. All the three volumes
issued by this society are very interesting. They
are edited by F. W. Maitland. Upon Monastic
History there are many very interesting books,
mostly published by Burns and Oates, London.

A list of useful books might be extended in-
definitely, especially if brought up to date.
Archaeology is a cumulative science gleaned from
varied sources. The antiquary usually is pos-
sessed of more brains than money, but if he is
fortunate enough to possess both, a large library
will be to him a never-ending sourceof amusement.

CHAPTER XI.

OLD LETTERS.

THERE were always two divisions of hand-
writing; the formal hand, employed for
clerk's work, and a freer, less mechanical, less
careful style, used for private correspondence.
Writing was a profession, and, as late as the six-
teenth century, when it was necessary to com-
municate with persons at a distance, a professional
scribe was employed to write the letter. But letter-
writing was rare, and did not become general
till after the sixteenth century ; even then it was
restricted to the upper classes of society. I have
in Chapter IV. given a brief account of the paper
used in England. Letter or post paper was
made of a square, uniform sheet, folded ; it was
known as ' Pot paper,' from its water-mark. This
varied slightly, the jug or water-pot being much
more elaborate in some examples. It came prin-
cipally from abroad, either the Low Countries or
Germany ; each separate factory very likely

Old Letters. 133

adopted a distinct shape ; the makers' initials
are to be found upon the band across the pot,
but are difficult to read.

The three following marks are taken from some
old letters, and are good types of their kind.

The writing of old letters I have placed after

(1561) (1563) (1623)

the chapter on registers, because the latter forms
a link between the clerical and personal hand-
writings. The letters have changed entirely
from the old black-letter style to a similar style,
like that still in use in Germany, and assuming
a distinct character, as may be seen in the
following alphabet.

Therefore, not only was the material for letter-
writing (i.e., paper) of foreign manufacture, but

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Old Letters. 135

also the handwriting bore close resemblance to
foreign styles. This may have resulted from the
original Anglo-Saxon element in the nationality
of the people, aided by the constant immigra-
tion of merchants from the Low Countries, who
came over to England during the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries, and established various
branches of trade, chiefly in linen or woollen
goods. They naturally introduced also the
fashions and customs of their own nations.
Added to this was the marriage of the king,
Richard II. with the German Princess Anne of
Bohemia, followed closely by the religious zeal of
the Reformers, bringing Germans and German
ideas strongly to the fore in English politics.
The earliest printers were German, and about the
time of this invention the small letter e written
backwards first came into use. Unfortunately
very little private correspondence exists prior to
the reign of Queen Elizabeth, except that pre-
served among public manuscripts. In those days
lifelong imprisonment was often the result of a
thoughtless committal of ideas into tangible form.
Letters were dangerous witnesses, and as such
were destroyed as soon as read. The posts were
not safe from inspection ; spies were employed
freely on all sides, and men, not afraid to suffer
for their opinions, nevertheless did not care to
risk their necks by needless imprudence.

136 Old Letters.

The earliest newspapers had a blank column
left to be filled by the sender with the latest
intelligence or local news. These were fitly
called 'News letters.' The phraseology of a
seventeenth century letter seems to us strange
on account of the conjugation of the verbs, the
use of 'hath' in place of 'has,' and the absence
of all unnecessary adverbs : the sentences, too, are
longer. The commencing words and the final
winding up of letters have both changed in the
past two hundred years.

With the eighteenth century we see these
changes gradually settling down and altering into
the modern forms. The old English y e for ' the,'
and the abbreviated & for ' and,' and the b, (d)
written in its antiquated shape, still remain, but
the German letters by degrees are given up.

The writing of each generation is most dis-
tinctly marked ; the dates from it may be ap-
proximately fixed without any difficulty, as well
as the age and character of the writer.

It has been said that the introduction of cheap
postage, and the immense increase of everyday
correspondence, has ruined handwriting, and
banished for ever the art of composition. True,
the short letters of to-day will not bear comparison
with the neat, voluminous diary-letters, full of
graphic scenic descriptions, which our grand-
parents were wont to compile for the benefit

Old Letters. 137

of relations left at home ; now, when similar
correspondence is undertaken, it is copied out
by the type- writer or printed, for few people
will take the trouble to read manuscript com-
positions. Looking beyond the opening years of
this century, we see a marked paucity of ideas
and carelessness of caligraphy in the correspon-
dence, getting worse the further back we go. In
the seventeenth century men were the chief cor-
respondents : they wrote on matters of business ;
few letters are preserved except on such topics,
which is a pity, for a letter must always be a
unique production, the best evidence procurable
of the writer and his times.

There is little to be said on the subject of old
letters. Practice in reading them makes the
lettering familiar, and gives facility which no
guide-book on them could explain, and letters,
both ancient and modern, will assume a new
interest when the little trifling, characteristic
peculiarities of the writer are examined by their
aid.

Old receipts, expense-books, and farm accounts
are found in plenty among old papers ; but what
we should prize now would be descriptions of
people and places as they existed some hundreds
of years ago.

CHAPTER XII.

ABBREVIATIONS, ETC.

IN most books treating of ancient hand-
writing, the abbreviations and contractions
are put forward as the most important part ;
certainly it is necessary to study them carefully,
but it was never intended by the old scribes that
they should be regarded as a language in them-
selves. At first they were used to save time and
space, then, by degrees, they increased in multi-
plicity as well as complexity, till banished alto-
gether by the invention of printing, upon the
advance of which the professional scribe dis-
appeared.

The contracted words most frequently used are
not always necessary to the sense of the sentence,
which may be arrived at without them. It is a
waste of time to puzzle over a word after its
meaning has been arrived at. Many persons
who require MS. extracts from public offices

Abbreviations, Etc. 139

take rough notes with the letters of the con-
tracted word ; these can be extended afterwards
at home, when there is time to seek in diction-
aries for the abbreviation or its meaning; with
practice the opening words of a sentence will very
often supply the context. The oldest forms of
contraction are a straight line over a word or a
curve, these indicate that a portion of the word
only is present, but no clue is given as to the
letters left out, or else the straight line may mean
m or n.

Later on the straight line above a word came
to represent the letters m and n. In words
where these letters were duplicated the second
one was omitted and the line placed above to
indicate its absence.' This continued in use
until late in the eighteenth century. Cofnon
meant ' common,' and comendation ' commenda-
tion.' If a curved line was over the end syllable
of a word, it meant one or more letters omitted at
the end of the word.

Verbs are the most troublesome class of con-
tracted words, for a contraction over a verb
may mean any syllable, according to the proper
grammatical conjugation. Here it is that know-
ledge of the Latin grammar is a necessity. The
meaning of the sentences may often be de-
ciphered, without extending the words, and the
correct conjugation of the verbs can be added

140 Abbreviations, Etc.

afterwards by another person, if the student's
knowledge of Latin is too limited to accomplish
this with accuracy. Certain signs or contractions
are fairly constant in their meanings, always taking
the place of special syllables. Thus a bold apos-
trophe above the line will be found to indicate
'er,' 'ir,' 'or,' 're.'
= ur.

5 = et, us. In Domesday ' et ' is written 1.

£ = ram, ras, ris.

f>is.

9 =us, OUS, OS.

A small letter over a word shows that a syllable
is left out of which this letter formed part.

The letter ' p ' had a system of its own, frequently
used in old deeds and also in old letters :

p = per, par, por.

]?=pre.

,g = pro.

In old court rolls ' and ' is written '"t,' and ' est '
appears as ' -h-,' especially in court-hand law
deeds.

A line drawn through the head of the letter ' i '
means also the addition of other letters, as is, e,
etc. This contraction in names is apt to be
confused with double ' tt.'

It is said that our alphabet did not formerly
contain as many letters as at present. The
letters ' i ' and ' j ' were identical until a recent

Abbreviations, Etc. 141

period. 'Wis said to have been derived from
two ' u's,' and is always so written in old deeds,
joined together, while ' u ' and ' v ' were used
indiscriminately. In old manuscripts the short-
stroke letters were formed alike ; thus ' n,' ' u,'
' w,' ' i,' are merely strokes or minims, difficult
to distinguish, more particularly where any of
these letters occur side by side in the formation
of words ; to count the strokes is the only guide.
Practice and a knowledge of likely words to be
employed solve the knotty point.

The chief difficulty of all lies in the correct
rendering of names, for these have perpetually
changed in their spelling. In a single deed
several different forms may be observed, the
result of clerical copying. Even with names the
system of abbreviation was carried on, especially
among court rolls; this will be noticed in such
surnames as ' Couper ' written ' Coup,' ' Shep-
herd ' as ' Shep.'

In certain styles of mediaeval writing the
terminals of words are carried upwards with a
long sweep, and are confusing in their resem-
blance to abbreviation marks. Here, again,
practice alone accustoms the eye to decide
whether a word is complete or not.

Dots and other kinds of stops in writing have
only come gradually into use in their present
significance.

142 Abbreviations, Etc.

In the Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, as in Roman
inscriptions, the dot is freely used to denote con-
tractions as well as to divide the words from each
other. In Domesday this is also noticed ; but with
later manuscripts the dot, or point, such as is used
in Norman times, fell into disuse in favour of lines
or curves for the abbreviated syllables. Upon the
introduction of printing our various kinds of stops
are first observed. It is said that the Elzevirs in-
vented some of them. The reversed semicolon is
commonly observed in some manuscripts.

Sooner or later, in any antiquarian search, the
printed sources of information will be exhausted,
and are not unfrequently found to be untrust-
worthy, especially county histories, which, being
compiled by men unacquainted with every minor
detail of the locality, are naturally liable to con-
fuse places of similar names. Nor is it possible
in so large a subject as a county history to enter
minutely into the separate parish histories of
places and people. Thus after awhile the untrust-
worthiness and insufficiency of book-knowledge
will be discovered, and some more original source
of information become desired. Manuscripts exist
in plenty, but are of little value unless studied
personally; for professional readers, although
able to read quickly and correctly, only give the
information desired ; whereas in a personal search
one subject opens out fresh clues to others of equal

Abbreviations, Etc. 143

importance, and new light is continually being
thrown upon hitherto unnoticed points ; more-
over, only by a personal investigation can the
antiquary be certain that he has obtained exactly
what he required. There are now plenty of
opportunities open to the public of seeing the
old documents pertaining to various offices and
societies, besides private collections, but without
some previous knowledge of the old handwritings,
etc., this permission is practically valueless.
Therefore, ' Persevere and practise ' is the best
motto I can give to those interested in the
matter, for proficiency comes quickly to those
who seek it ; and, as in all subjects, ' Nothing
ucceeds like success.'

THE END.

Elliot Stock, Paternoster Row, Lonicm.

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